Lonesome Traveler
by Katowisp
Summary: Loki meets his fate on the path he took to avoid it, and Steve paid the price. Frigga was always meant to travel to Niflheim to bring her beloved Baldr back, and she was always meant to fail. The Avengers journey in her place, and they don't aim to fail. Living is hard, but being dead is harder. (Part 4 of Fairytales and Other Forms of Suicide)
1. Captain my Captain

Prologue

_But I, with mournful tread,_

_Walk the deck my captain lies,_

_Fallen cold and dead._

-O Captain! My Captain! –Walt Whitman

Natasha had been death to enough men in her life that she knew the exact moment that life faded from the eyes.

What happened after was business best left to Priests and Clerics and no concern of hers, but in that moment that still belonged to her, just as the last breath was leaving the body—a spark of light that had been there was suddenly gone.

She suspected Tony recognized it, too, because the moment the light faded from Steve's eyes, he became frantic. She didn't have to look over at Loki to know he was dead. Thor's howls of grief were enough of an indication on their own.

"Cap?" Tony shook Steve, his body moving limply with the movement. Tony shook harder. "Steve! Get the hell up! You're _Captain America!_" he began frantically shaking Steve's shoulders, the Captain's head lolling to the side.

"You don't get to do this!" Tony shouted, wild eyes catching those of a healer. "Save him!"

"I cannot," she said, soaking up the cooling blood with great swaths of fabric, wiping away the blood from Steve's mouth and chin.

"Don't give me that bullshit! You people are _gods!_" Tony raged, hitting Steve's chest. He snarled angrily, and turned away from them to focus on Steve's corpse.

"Never mind, _I_ can bring him back! I brought myself back," he swore as he began chest compressions, ignoring the cracking beneath his hands.

"Even gods die," Heimdall said calmly in Tony's ear as he wrested him away. "You should be proud. It was a warrior's death."

Tony wrenched away from the guardian.

"You can go fuck yourself!"

He swung out at the Guardian before Clint intercepted him, catching the wild blow with an open palm. His eyes were red, but he knew as well as Natasha that there was nothing to be done now and that the time for grief would be later.

"Hey, come on," Clint said as he pulled Tony away. "Chill out. We've already got Bruce trying to Hulk out."

Bruce was next to Natasha, muscles bulging as he fought against the urge to give into his rage.

As if murdering everyone on this alien planet would bring Steve back.

Natasha slipped her hands around one of his, whispering a string of platitudes to bring him back from the edge.

Tony wheeled on Clint, his face wild.

"You don't get to tell me that! He's not supposed to die! _Captain America_ doesn't die! _Jesus Christ_, he only _just_ woke up!"

Clint wrapped his arms around Tony again, this time pulling him to his chest.

"I know," he said quietly.

Tony became a heavy weight, sagging against Clint as he leaned his head against his teammate's shoulder, tears leaking from his eyes as his body was wracked in silent sobs.

Clint looked up to the arched ceiling, painted to look like a field on a summer evening, the first stars of the night revealed in a darkening sky.

"I know," he repeated.

0o0o0o0o0o0o

They held silent vigil over their teammate's corpses as Aesir tradition demanded it.

For the Avengers, there was no other option.

Natasha palmed two gold coins she'd gotten in a back alley card game. She'd won on a fluke, but it was the game that changed her life-a member of the Black Widow Program had been there and had been impressed by her luck and slight of hand and had recruited her with the promise that she would never know hunger again.

The rest of the money won that night was long gone, but she'd kept these two coins to remind her where she'd come from. She would never freely admit to being superstitious but she couldn't deny a certain amount of luck in her life, and she'd carried the gold with her every day since the day she'd won them.

Now she slid them over Steve's eyes.

"Your coins," Clint said, breaking the silence that had fallen over them.

"This should serve the boatman."

While Natasha had never taken stock in religion, Steve could use the luck more than her.

The healers had cleaned and dressed Steve in a simple white tunic, hiding the gruesome mortal wound. There was nothing to be done for the bruises that marred his face.

The work was well done; and were it not for the pale complexion and still chest, Natasha could fool herself into thinking he was simply asleep.

She had known her Captain longer than some of her leaders and less than others, but of everyone she'd ever followed, she thought she might have loved him best. He was everything a leader should be; just and dependable, decisive with just the right amount of tact to keep the team working. Most of all, he was selfless. She could not recall one time Steve had put himself above the team; and she could not think of another she'd ever followed that had been able to do that.

Without him, she wasn't sure the center could hold. On their best days, her teammates defined the word in only the loosest sense and Steve had been the only one who could wrangle them together and make them all better for it. The thought made her sad: of all the teams she'd been participant to, the Avengers was the first one where she actually felt part of something greater than herself.

"What will we do without him?" Bruce voiced her thoughts. Natasha looked at him quickly, but his eyes were on Steve. "I would follow no other."

Natasha looked to Tony for some quip, some failed attempt at humor, but his face was somber, his eyes wet when they met hers. "No," he agreed.

Natasha reached to clasp Steve's cold hand in her own. She had learned at a young age that death was final, but as she tried to imagine the Tower empty of Steve's morning breakfasts; his garden never to be planted again, a lump grew in her chest. For the first time in a long time, she felt tears well in her eyes. She tried to blink them away, and ended up wiping them angrily from her face. But it was as if the floodgates to all the death she'd ever suffered had been opened, and suddenly she was sobbing. She covered her face in an attempt to stop the flow, to hide her embarrassment. The Black Widow _did not cry_.

She felt an arm wrap around her shoulders and pull her close. She didn't have to look to know it was Clint, and instead of trying to placate her with empty platitudes, he held her quietly. She looked up at him, and his bright blue eyes were blurred, silent streams falling down his face to drop off his chin.

"This is the Hall of Waiting," Frigga said. Natasha looked up, wiping the tears away from her eyes. She usually had a handle on people, but the Queen's non sequitur took her by surprise. Frigga's hand was rested on Loki's face, as if she sought to wake her son. In sleep, his brows were unfurrowed and he looked exceedingly young. "Time moves around this chamber, and as long as they rest here, they will not decay."

"So?" Tony frowned.

"We may bring them back, just yet," the Queen continued, unfazed by Tony's tone.

"That's impossible," Bruce said quickly.

"If the Fates have not cut their thread, and they may not, as long as they are here, they may be saved."

"What do you propose we do?" Tony asked, "Just swoop into…where is it the hell you people go when you die? And what about Steve? Did he—I mean, I don't believe in this stuff, but isn't he supposed to be in Heaven now or something?"

"Loki went to Niflheim," Thor said, his voice gravelly from unshed tears. "So it was always written, and so he must be."

"Niflheim?" Bruce asked. "Isn't that where they were before?"

"This is a different part," Frigga elucidated, smoothing her robes. "The root of Niflheim is great. When Odin came to realize that he had made a place for his warriors and none for those who died dishonorable deaths, a portion of the root was delegated to serve those found wanting, and Hel to reign over it."

"But you disagreed," Natasha guessed. Frigga's face flashed briefly, and she looked away.

"It was many years ago, and how I felt on the matter is unimportant. But what you must know is that they are there now, and they may come back to us, if you are willing to journey to Niflheim and bring their souls back."

"But why would Steve be there? This—" Tony motioned to their dead leader "—was a violent death, and he clearly fought. Anyway, wouldn't he be in his own afterlife?"

"He would," Frigga began slowly, "save for the fact that their souls are bound, and where one goes, the other must follow. I have no doubt my son is in Hel's clutches even now, and with him, your Captain."

"Steve doesn't belong there!" Tony stood up angrily. "This is your curse, you can undo it!"

Frigga's face was smooth, and she regarded Tony with an even gaze. "Not anymore, I cannot."

"You mean to send us on Balder's journey," Thor said suddenly. His massive hands still circles around one of Loki's, he looked at his mother sharply, brow furrowed.

"Yes," she agreed.

"But I have read the sagas, and that journey was unsuccessful. Your endeavors bore no fruit."

"It did not," Frigga said, "but this is not Balder's death, and the Sagas lay unwritten. The Fates have erased their works from our pages, and we may prove victory just yet."

"Wait, what do you mean the "Sagas are unwritten"?" Bruce interrupted.

"When your Captain saved my son, it undid everything the Fates had written. They had never thought to account for one as lowly as a Midgardian, and so when Steve thwarted Loki's attempt to kill his brother, it undid everything ever written. For the first time since the Early Age, before we were aware of our destinies, we again choose freely on the decisions laid before us."

"Woah," Tony said, leaning back against his chair. "I feel like I've fallen down a really, really deep rabbit hole."

"Do you know who killed Steve?" Clint asked, leaning forward. Natasha glanced at him. His tears had dried, though his eyes were still red-rimmed and puffy.

"I do. Many years ago, Odin and Loki killed the father of the goddess of winter and mountains, Skadi. She almost went to war with Odin over the matter, but he offered her a husband, instead. It is well known that she has long loved Balder and so my husband proposed that she could choose from a number of available gods on one condition—that she could only see their feet. She chose the healthiest, strongest feet in the assumption that they belonged to my son.

"Her assumption was wrong, and the owner of the chosen feet was the god of the sea, Njörðr. It was an ill-fated marriage, and she has blamed my family ever since. When she learned the Fates no longer bound her, she decided she would take her vengeance. She sought my son, but found your Captain instead. Either way, she was successful in her mission."

"That bastard killed him after all," Clint said.

Frigga bristled. "You will not speak of my son that way in my presence."

"Listen—" Clint began, leaning forward. Natasha quickly rested a calming hand on his arm. His eyes met hers, and she shook her head. Clint frowned, but leaned back, his arm still tense under her grasp.

"There's a journey?" Bruce prompted.

"It is not easy, and you may prove unsuccessful, as I once would have, but if you are set on bringing your Captain—and my son—back, it is the only option available to us."

"Lady," Tony said with a ghost of his old self, "You've never met the Avengers. Impossible is what we _do_."

Chapter End


	2. Who By Fire

_And who by fire, who by water,_

_Who in the sunshine, who in the night time,_

_Who by high ordeal, who by common trial,_

_Who in your merry merry month of may,_

_Who by very slow decay,_

_And who shall I say is calling?_

Who By Fire—Leonard Cohen

Once they had accepted Frigga's mission, it was decided they would leave the following morning.

A great feast would be held in their honor, and Frigga had set off with purpose to make the arrangements for the dinner.

Before she left, however, she had gathered a host of servants to show the Avengers to their rooms. Tony had spent a long time gazing around his own accommodations in awe.

The room he had been bestowed was enormous: high ceilings, ornately carved pillars.

The walls were adorned with tapestries that depicted Thor in various states of heroism.

Tony had thought _he_ was self-indulgent, but Thor put him to shame. If they survived this crazy journey, he'd see if he couldn't wrangle an Asgardian artist or two to capture his heroic feats in similar fashion.

If nothing else, Frigga owed it to him.

He looked at Thor, who was standing hopefully in the doorway, holding a suit of armor. It seemed that he was under the disillusion that Tony would agree to wear it.

"No, my Iron Man suit will do," Tony insisted loudly when Thor announced his intentions.

Thor's face fell, the breastplate he'd held out to Tony drooping in his grasp. Tony grimaced, wishing he could agree to wear the armor, but even without JARVIS connected to the Ironman suit, a man had died in its creation, and he felt like he owed it Dr. Yinsen to wear it. Besides, he knew the capabilities of the armor, and if they were to be traveling into Asgard's afterlife, Niflheim, he wanted to be as prepared as possible.

Clint strode in through Tony's open door before Thor could respond, moving awkwardly in his black plated armor as if he couldn't get it to sit quite right. He kept shifting, getting used to the new weight.

"Is the mail really necessary?" He asked unhappily.

"It is!" Thor stated loudly, as though volume could restore his enthusiasm. "The weapons we will face are different than the variety on Midgard. This will protect you!"

"But why do we have to do dinner in it?" Clint groused, pulling at the intricately carved breastplate.

"It is a feast for heroes," Thor said. "Nothing less is expected."

"I mean... surely your friends can appreciate that we're from Earth, right? You've never worn _our_ armor," the ranger pointed out.

Thor raised his eyebrows.

"I do not expect a spandex suit to award me more protection than the armor forged personally for me by the dwarves."

"Oooh, valid point," Tony smiled. "Although, the mental image is pretty rewarding," he said, wiggling his eyebrows at Thor. Thor frowned back.

"Oh, gross, Tony," Clint blanched.

"I think I'm going to set on making a spandex suit just for you when we get back, Thor," Tony leered. "You're going to be so popular with the ladies."

"I do not need to be popular with 'the ladies', I have my Jane."

"Thor, my man, let me tell you, Jane will love it."

The demigod's face grew thoughtful.

"I had not that about that," he admitted. "Very well, you may make me such a thing, though I do not promise it to wear outside of the company of Jane," a grin ghosted across Thor's face.

Tony grinned back, but it was strained. For a brief moment there'd been a hint of the old team dynamics, but Thor's smile had faded once his eyes caught the tapestry behind Tony's bed.

The billionaire followed the demigod's attention. Tony had given a cursory look to all the stories told in the swaths of silk and woven gold and silver when he'd first entered his room. Of all of them, he'd found the one behind is bed the most confusing. A dark-haired man was sitting dejectedly at a table, swaths of empty plates before him.

"Who is that?" Tony asked.

"That," Thor sighed, "is my brother. When we went to the City of Utgard, we were challenged to prove ourselves worthy of the king. Loki was challenged to out-eat the King's choice. But he lost."

"Loki's not a super popular guy even in Asgard, huh? I mean, can you imagine having your failures plastered on the walls for everybody to see?" Tony observed lightly. Thor's mouth drew in a thin line.

"You do not know the story. It was one of my brother's greatest moments."

"Oh."

Tony observed the tapestry, finding he had a greater understanding of Loki. Tony knew what it was like to be vilified by the media, but at the end of the day, he had his tower and Pepper and his projects to come home to. He could turn his TVs off. Loki couldn't. His failures had been woven onto the walls of the guest rooms.

Tony thought he'd be a little surly, too, if his tower was similarly decorated in the newspaper clipping smear campaigns against him.

Bruce peeked his head around the door. Tony noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye, and was anxious to draw the scientist in, to derail the current line of conversation.

"Do not be shy, Mr. Banner!" Tony tried his best imitation of Thor's odd phrasing, but the words sounded weird in his own voice.

Bruce scowled at Tony as he entered the room. He looked miserable in his own armor, an earthy brown detailed in green. It fit him well, better than his too-large shirts he was prone to wear, as if they'd stay on anyway if he changed. He managed to be slightly more tolerant than Clint but he too shifted after every few steps.

Tony sighed as he realized there'd be no solace to be found in Bruce, his mood as dark as Tony's own.

If Steve were here, he'd known how to cheer them up.

But Steve was the reason _why_ they were here, and Tony hadn't realized how much he missed the man until he was gone.

They stayed in awkward silence, making the small talk of strangers until Natasha made her appearance. She was absolutely deadly in her armor, and she showed none of the awkwardness of her teammates. She moved silently, with none of the clanking that heralded her arrival that way it had Bruce and Clint. Tony would be the first to admit that the fitted armor brought out all her attributes in exactly the right ways, but he also knew that saying so would result in not only an ass-kicking from Natasha, but from Pepper, when (_if_, a traitorous voice whispered) they got home.

It was just as well. Pepper was too perceptive by half, but Natasha put her to shame. She seemed to know what any of her team were thinking before they did, and Tony wasn't sure he could date a woman who knew him better than he knew himself.

"Friends, we are well met!" Thor said with false cheer as Natasha made her entrance. "We shall sup in a feast meant for our honor and tomorrow we embark on an adventure few have ventured before their time."

"Great," Clint intoned, but his eyes, Tony noticed, were on Natasha.

"I _am_ hungry," Bruce admitted, looking around Thor's room. "What act of heroics is that?" He asked, indicated Loki's failure tapestry, and Tony swore if he half the chance, he'd rip it down. "Is that Lo-"

"Boy, look at the time," Tony said loudly, tapping his naked wrist. Bruce looked at him perplexedly, but when he glanced back at the tapestry and then to Thor, dawning grew his eyes and he fell silent.

"Follow me," Thor commanded stonily, striding out towards the banquet hall. Tony and Bruce shared a look before following in line.

The banquet hall, like the rest of Asgard, was grand to the point of ostentatiousness. Huge pillars reached to a high ceiling that was intricately painted in grand heroics. Tapestries of all the great deeds of the Aesir hung in silk, shimmering in the reflected light of the evening sun and torches. Tony noticed that Loki was conspicuously absent from any of the depicted heroics, and his sympathy grew.

There was a huge oak table, laden with every dish imaginable in bowls and platters made of gold. Men and women in waiting stood quietly in the shadows of the pillars holding jugs of wine and mead, ready to refill any goblet the moment it was emptied.

Odin sat at the head of the table, his wife at the other end. He motioned for the Avengers to take a seat. Tony had to admire his ceremonial armor. Odin was resplendent in the torchlight, catching the light in all the right ways and making him look bigger than he was. His face was craggy, the eye patch across his face painfully obvious, but he looked as strong a man as Tony had ever seen.

But Tony had seen the look on his face when he'd come into the Hall of Waiting during their vigil, and knew that Odin's boisterousness was a front. From what Tony had gathered, Odin and his adopted son had had a rocky relationship, but that didn't make the sorrow in his face any less real.

"Welcome, honored guests!" Odin boomed, and Tony admired his veracity. After his own trials in Afghanistan, he'd taken a hamburger and sat on his briefing platform. Odin showed no such weakness. "Tonight you dine on the finest that Asgard has to offer. You will not tread into those dark lands hungry and ill-kept!"

"Hear, hear!" Another god cried out. From the rosy cheeks and unkempt hair, he assumed the gods had been prepartying and were already three sheets to the wind.

"Sit!" Odin commanded with a wave of his hand. "Tell us your tale, of how you came to Asgard and the adventure you embark on."

Odin, Tony knew, was abreast of all the details of their eminent journey, but he knew a marketer when he saw it, and Odin wanted to rally his pantheon behind him. Tony knew the Aesir considered Earthlings an inferior race, knew, further, that they didn't care much for Loki and less about Steve. But Loki was Odin's son, and Steve was their teammate, and they'd toast the Avenger's journey all the same.

Odin swung an accommodating arm towards the Avengers. They'd been saved the seats of honor, but a chair on Odin's side, closest to his seeing eye, remained conspicuously absent. Before Tony could dwell on it, Thor began speaking.

"Friends! At dawn's breaking we will travel into Hel's realm, a place few willingly traverse! There we will rescue my brother, Loki, recently turned from his ways by the hero of Midgard, Captain Steve Rogers-" a shout went up among the diners before Thor continued over them "who has followed him into her dark realms in honor of the bind my mother created!" Another shout went up.

Thor was, Tony realized, not quite the buffoon he'd come to expect. Whereas he'd been awkward on Earth in a way Loki never was, he fit in here in a way Tony suspected Loki never could.

"Come, heroes of Midgard, tell us your story!" A god cried out. He had a bushy red beard and hair to match. Thor grinned hugely at him and Tony suspected they were friends. He sat beside a woman with black hair pulled back tightly and a distinctly Asian-looking man. Clint looked at Stark with raised eyebrows, an he raised his shoulders, giving a _how the hell should I know? _shrug.

Thor elbowed Tony. Tony stood; mustering all the confidence it took to do press releases and began telling his tale.

"I trust you all know your own Loki well," he began. The pantheon regarded him coolly. Tony felt a spark of anger that he quickly smothered. Loki had done some pretty shitty stuff, and maybe he couldn't appreciate having to live with Loki's snark for millennia, and he was no Captain America, but he recognized bullying when he saw it. Tony cleared his throat. "But I come to tell you about my friend and leader, who has been pulled—against his will—" because Tony knew that was true at least, "into the realm of Hel." Tony's words were met with raucous cheers, and Tony suspected, if the rapidly refilling goblets were any indication, the party would cheer nearly anything he'd say in short order.

After Frigga had told them they could rescue Steve, and by extension, Loki, from the Aesir version of Hell, Tony had gone to Bruce for details. Hel, he explained, was Loki's daughter in the myths, but he was fuzzy on if the books were accurate on this account. What he _did_ know was that she ruled over the portion of Niflheim where those who had not died in battle were cursed to roam. On the day of reckoning, the dead of her realm would surge forth and fight the Aesir. It was this realm that Loki was also doomed to, trapped under by entrails of his son, Fenrir. (Also, Bruce admitted, a part he wasn't sure matched up with reality.) There, a serpent dripped acid onto his face. In the sagas, Loki's wife held a bowl over his face to protect him from the poison, but when she moved to dump it he'd shudder, causing the whole earth to shake.

"This is the myth for earthquakes, and I haven't had a chance to read the actual Sagas written by the Fates so I think that's something that early man added as an explanation for the phenomenon," Bruce had explained, moments after Queen Frigga had told them Steve might be saved.

"Steve's dead. We saw him die. You're a man of science."

"I agree, and yet…two years ago I'd have told you that an advanced race of beings were the basis of Norse legend was a happy fiction, and ten years ago I'd have told you I was always in control of my base impulses. Sometimes things happen that we can't explain. If they say Steve's soul is cursed to Niflheim along with Loki's but that they can both be saved, I don't see why we shouldn't try. If nothing else, it'll allow us to travel lands no mortal has tread before."

"They're not immortal," Tony had replied peevishly, "They just have a longer life span."

"Well, if this is the same Odin that the Norse have been writing about for over two millennia, it's one hell of a lifespan."

Natasha coughed, and Tony realized his long pause. He continued, "Steve—Captain America—is the best leader Midgard has ever seen. He bonded himself to Loki in an attempt to keep him from destroying our realm—" a large roar went up around them. Tony shot a look at Natasha. She'd coached him in the words to use.

_"Make them both heroes. Make them both worth saving. Use words they understand. Gods or aliens, I don't care. Sell our cause to them. Belief is a remarkable thing, and we need them to support us if Niflheim is as bad as everyone says." Natasha coached as she sat over Steve's body._

"Now, one of your own hated enemies—one with giant's blood from Jotunheim, a daughter of a Jotunn who stole Odin's own property—" Loud booing interrupted him, and he waited for it to die down before he continued, "has killed them both."

This time, the jeering was almost deafening. Frigga had hastily filled them in on Asgard's sordid past with the woman named Skadi. Steve's murderer had been a mystery to the Avengers, but Odin's ravens had known who was behind it. (Literally, _talking birds _and if that didn't beat all, Tony didn't know what did.) Tony couldn't even pretend to understand all the intricate offenses dealt over centuries. It was like trying to understand the Middle East, and he'd never cared about the details behind that conflict either, until he found himself in a cave with a car battery linked to his chest.

_After Steve's death and the appropriate cleansing traditions occurred, Frigga had left them alone in the Hall of Waiting to gather themselves. Bruce explained the import of her information. "It means," he said over Steve's body, "that the Sagas have been unwritten. None of this was supposed to happen until after Loki's stole the mistletoe and killed his brother, Balder. Because that never happened…."_

_ "…Loki's tie to his fate was unwritten," Natasha realized. Tony looked at them both skeptically. All of this stuff still seemed like a bunch of voodoo to him._

_ "It means," Clint said after catching Tony's eyes, "that Loki didn't have to be responsible for Ragnarok. Something happened that broke him free."_

_ "Steve," Natasha stressed. "He severed Loki's binds."_

_ "Oh," Tony said. "Oh," he repeated as he realized what it meant. Not for the first time since meeting Captain America, he understood why his father had made it his life mission to find America's lost son. _

"Tomorrow," Tony continued after the roar had calmed down, "we mere Midgardardians travel to Hel's realm to bring them both back. We will return with both, or not at all."

The cheers that met Tony's statement put any previous press statements to shame. The hall raised their goblets, too excited or inebriated to care about the details. They cheered the team uproariously, tankards clashing together excitedly, and suddenly Tony knew where Thor got it. All this time, Thor had just been a fun companion, awkward and too big in a world that demanded propriety.

It was, Tony realized, what had drawn him to Thor.

Tony's speechmaking done, the revelers dug into the first course. Succulent meat, an animal that Tony couldn't pronounce but was delicious all the same, sat steaming on the table. Honeyed spirits were as plentiful as the food, and soon Tony challenged his teammates to a drinking game.

"Drink, for tomorrow we dine in hell!" Tony quoted, refusing to dwell on just how literal the words were.

"To Steve Rogers, the best man I ever knew and dead before his time!" Clint raised a goblet. Tony realized the ranger fit in here. His archaic weapon belonged in a way it never had on earth, where he was deadly accurate and little more than a novelty.

"To Steve Rogers!" The hall echoed.

And so it went, drinking to the dead and to the living and to the great adventures they'd all been on and ones yet to come. Tony lost track after the twentieth or so toast. By dessert, they could have been served dirt for all he cared or knew. Clint hadn't even made it—he was slumped over the table, his hand loosely gripping a half-empty goblet.

At the far end of the table, Frigga remained composed and distant. If anyone noticed, they failed to mention it. Her eyes remained unnaturally bright and although tears gathered in the corners, she refused to shed them.

Later in the evening, Odin clanged a knife against his goblet. "And now! For the honored guest of the evening!"

The hall quieted as much as a hall of inebriated gods could, their attention turning to a misshapen woman that stood at the doors to the great hall. Her shoulders were hunched and scraggly black hair hung around her face, long bangs hiding a protruding forehead and sunken eyes lined in kohl and lips painted black. She hesitated at the bright doors, obviously an ill match for those dining within.

"Come, come, Lady Hel!" Odin called. He motioned to the seat beside him that had remained empty.

The woman lurched down the hall, one foot dragging behind her. Gray robes, decayed and moth eaten were wrapped around her, and Tony wondered if these were her finest clothes.

"Boy is she-" Tony began, voice loud in the hush of the hall.

Bruce elbowed him sharply and said, "That's the goddess keeping Steve!"

"Are you _serious_?" Tony slurred. "Steve could beat her in like, two seconds."

"Shut _up_," Natasha hissed.

Hel lurched towards them, taking the last available seat, she settled across from Thor. Thor smiled brightly. She attempted to return it, her lips curving up in a grimace. Thor's smile faded, and he looked into his cup uncertainly.

"Lady Hel, it is with great honor that you welcome you to this feast!" Odin declared. The hall allowed a reluctant toast to her honor before falling quiet again, Clint's snores painfully loud in the silence.

"What do you want?" Hel snatched a leg from the offering before here as she peered at Odin with a lopsided gaze. She tore at the meat, and when she spoke, Tony could see her teeth were black and rotted. "You've not invited me to a feast in quite some time."

"It was an oversight," Odin said smoothly, "One to be rectified," he promised.

Hel stabbed at her plate, pushing another morsel into her mouth. The hall's patrons began to dine again, but the earlier joviality had died and dinner became a decidedly somber affair.

"This isn't about your son, is it?" Hel asked, picking up her goblet. Mead spilled around her lips and dripped down her face. She wiped it away with an edge of fraying fabric, her mismatched eyes piercing each Avenger in turn.

Odin smiled winningly at her, and Tony could see where Thor got his open smile and guile. But Thor's smiles reached in his eyes in a way Odin's did not, and Tony drunkenly realized they were in the middle of delicate negotiation. A crow came to rest on Odin's shoulder, cawing softly in his ear.

"What would make you think that?" Odin casually tore meat off the bone, with greasy hands.

"Oh," Hel said, swirling her mead, "just the fact that he is fulfilling his destiny just yet."

Odin's smile became forced, his face tight. "If you would deliver my son and his bonded to me without trial it would save these brave few on a daring quest."

Tony knew a threat when he heard it, and a chill went down his spine. It had been folly to classify the Aesir as a boisterous, if harmless, alien race. He could hear Pepper's voice in his ear, chiding him for underestimating them.

"You speak of the Midgadian Steve Rogers, who was allowed the option to go home. " Hel said conversationally, "It's for the best: clean souls are dirtied fast enough when dragged through the muck."

Odin refused to rise to the bait. "On the morrow, my son Thor and his team of Midgard's best will venture into your realm." Tony heard the unspoken _without or without your permission._

Hel tilted her head, eyeing Thor. She smiled. "I do not give up the patrons of my realm easily; they do not go there undeserved. Steve Rogers was ill met to bind himself to Loki, who has had millennia to earn his place among my ranks."

"Surely there is something you would claim for your own," Frigga spoke up from her end of the table, her eyes sharp and Tony suspected she had not drained her cup once. "Something we have that you want."

"Oh Frigga, you think they might succeed when you would not have," Hel cooed. "Well, I have all that I could ask for: a world of misshapen souls, like myself. They would not find themselves welcome at your table. Tell me, Odin, would you send a cadre into my realm at the behest of any, or just your bastard son?"

"He_ is_ my son!" Odin roared.

"Oh, I'm sure he is," Hel smiled into her goblet before taking a healthy swig.

Queen Frigga stood quickly, diverting the attention of the table to herself with a clang of her goblet. "A toast," she cried, "To the House of Odin!"

The table cheered uncertainly, lifting golden goblets that clashed together with much less exuberance than before.

Hel smiled, shoveling food into her mouth. "I thought not." She turned her attention to Thor and the Avengers.

"You shall find the way hard, though not impossible. I reward those who are successful and conniving in a way _these _ones never are," she said with a casual nod of her head to the pantheon before standing abruptly, her plate left mostly unfinished. "I thank you, Odin One-eye for the place of honor at your table, but things become...chaotic if I am not there to reign in my creatures. Stop—I do not need your disproving looks. These are the souls of those you found wanting. Because they did not die in one of your glorious battles, you deemed them lacking. Now they are mine to do with as I see fit."

She lurched out. Once the doors closed behind her, Tony loudly slurred, "That is the most hideous woman I have ever seen!"

The table cheered.

0o0o0o0o0o0o

Consciousness came slowly and painfully. The ambient light that filtered in was entirely too bright, and Clint's head pounded muddily with his heart and his eyes were heavy with sleep that cracked his eyelids. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so drunk. Trying to match Thor and Tony shot for shot had been a terrible idea. He had lost count around fifty toasts, and he knew Bruce and Tony had plowed on eagerly. Bruce, because the gamma rays had reduced the impact of alcohol on his liver, and Tony, because he felt he had something to prove and scores of countless nights spent in similar fashion had raised his tolerance in a way Clint could never hope to obtain.

He realized belatedly that a man stood at the foot of his bed. Clint rose rapidly, cursing his inebriation as the room spun. Hell if he wasn't still drunk. The man remained stoic throughout Clint's cursing. When Clint could focus on him, he wondered if Aesir mead also had hallucinogenic properties. Some dude straight out of Lord of the Rings was standing patiently in a simple, if not incredibly intricately detailed tunic. He was holding up the breastplate from the night before and looking at Clint expectedly.

He also wasn't sure why the man was there holding it. After a pregnant pause, Clint wondered if he was supposed to say something. "I thought that was only for last night."

"For your travels, sir," the man finally allowed.

"Uh," Clint paused. Why did thinking have to be so hard? How did Tony drink like this almost every day? He could feel his liver trying to make sense of the poison he'd dumped into it.

"I shall help you dress," the man offered when it became apparent that even standing was something of an impossible journey for Clint.

"Uh," Clint repeated dumbly. "What? I'm not wearing that."

"The Queen insists." There was an edge that rippled across the man's placidity and Clint wondered if the rest of his team was undergoing the same treatment.

"I don't need help," Clint said. He had a feeling it would be easier to subject himself to this now and drop the armor later. Armor, where was he? If he could get the man out of here, he'd find Natasha and they could find Tony and Bruce and get this show on the road.

"Sir, this armor cannot be donned without assistance."

"Ah, all right, I guess," Clint rubbed his hand across his face. He felt as if alcohol was leaking through every pore. "Is there anywhere I can wash up?"

"A trip to the baths is normally in order after a night of feasting, but it is of utmost important you leave immediately; the dead do not wait."

"Wait—" Clint interrupted. "Are you sure that's the saying? I thought it was the dead _can_ wait."

The servant ignored him. "I have brought you water that flows swift and clear from its source here in Asgard. It is remarkable for its curative properties." The servant offered a flask. Clint took it greedily, throwing back the clear, cool liquid. His hangover didn't disappear, but his headache lessened.

"Thanks," Clint managed a smile.

The servant nodded and retrieved the flask. "Your armor?"

Damn, he was persistent. But Clint thought that might be a trait needed around here, if the pushy Aesir he'd met were any indication.

"Okay," he relented.

The servant helped him into his chain mail and in strapping on the armor. The world gradually stopped spinning, the spring water rushing through his veins. His tongue was still thick in his mouth and his feet uncertain, and Clint really hoped this magical spring water stuff would do whatever it did before they left for Niflheim.

Once dressed, he stumbled behind the servant to Odin's hall, heartened to see that Bruce and Tony seemed to be in worst condition. Tony was in his Iron Man suit, helmet under one arm, but Clint was gladdened to see Bruce was dressed in similar fashion as he. Thor showed up a few minutes later with no signs of hangover. At that moment, Clint thought he might hate the man.

"That was a feast fit for kinds...kings!" Thor declared. Clint grinned, and found he didn't hate Thor so quite so much.

"Armor suits you," Tony said. Clint raised his eyebrows.

"I didn't know you swung that way."

"Not you. Natasha." Tony rolled his eyes, indicating Natasha. Clint turned. Natasha was always beautiful, but the armor she wore accented the delicate if not lethal lines of her body and where Clint felt like a clattering buffoon, she moved stealthily.

Odin strode in, his queen behind him. Her face was composed, her hair knotted neatly on her head. But Clint had seen her cry over her dead son, and he knew her composure was an act.

"I have traveled Hel's realm but once," Odin began.

"Oh good, getting right down to business," Tony said.

Odin glanced at him before continuing, "And the way was not easy. You face a hard road, but the victory is great should you succeed."

"And if we don't?" Tony asked. He had his Oakley's on, but his brow was still creased from the light.

"Then it will be an eternity of torture," Odin said.

"Oh, is that all?"

"Tony, shut up," Bruce scowled. Tony frowned but didn't interrupt Odin with anymore.

Odin motioned to his wife. Frigga stepped forward, her dress flowing around her.

"I will arm you for your journey," she said. Clint glanced at Tony. He was grinning cheekily and Clint didn't have to ask to know what he was thinking. They'd marathoned _Lord of the Rings_ a few days before during the Christmas Lag, so Frigga's comparison to Galadriel was painfully obvious.

Except the One Ring was Steve, or maybe Loki. And they were bringing them back, not dumping them over Mount Doom.

Frigga remained still for moment, her eyes shifting to each of the Avengers. She moved first to her son, clasping something in his hands and whispering in his ear. He nodded minutely, and she looked at him for a long time, his hand clasped in hers.

She came next to Tony and then to Bruce. Clint could see her mouth moving, but could not parse her words. When she at last spoke to Clint, he felt his headache subside and his head clear. "You will find Hel's realm dark and treacherous," she said, "First, a spell to clear your head," she smiled at him and for a moment, Clint felt that she was probably the most beautiful woman in the world.

"You should smile more often," Clint told her. Her smile faded instead, and Clint frowned.

"I will, when you bring me back my son. I have also a talisman for you to show you the way to what you seek. I know you care not what happens to my son, but he is my world. If you return him to me, the treasures you will have will be untold."

"I don't care about treasure," Clint said.

"I mean more than material things," Frigga said, her eyes searching his. "You have never had a son. You do not know what it is like."

"You have two others," Clint pointed out. "And they are actually yours."

Frigga stiffened. "He may not be mine by blood, but he is mine by spirit. I love him as much as a mother can love a son. He could have been destined for greatness, had the Fates not claimed him first. Bring him back to me." She reached out, finding his hands.

Clint looked at her searchingly. He felt his soul peeled away beneath her gaze. He finally nodded. "We won't fail you," he promised.

Queen Frigga squeezed his hands, a small smile touching her lips. It did not reach her eyes, but Clint's soul felt lighter all the same.

"I hope that is true. Safe travels, Clint Barton. You are to be protected from your nightmares and evil deeds while you are in Hel's dark realms."

Clint nodded. Frigga held his hands for a moment longer before letting go, and Clint felt the warmth go with her.

As she stepped back, Clint realized the power that this woman held. She was as dangerous as Odin, as dangerous as any he'd ever known.

She opened her arms. "Be safe, heroes of Midard." She gazed at each one evenly. "Now go forth, and bring back Loki and Steve."

Thor nodded. "Follow me!" He said, and strode towards Heimdall's rainbow road.

CHAPTER end

The tapestry is from Loki and Thor's to Utgard, city of the giants of Jotunheim. You can read the full story here: Thor_

I know this chapter may be a bit slow, but don't worry. Things are going to get moving quite quickly!


	3. Dead Man's Bones

CHAPTER 2 Dead Man's Bones

_You should know,_

_what's really going down, below._

_Dressed in their best clothes,_

_there are rows and rows and rows_

_of dead man's bones._

_You should know, _

_that the world was built on bones._

Dead Man's Bones—Dead Man's Bones

The shimmering Bitfrost had become corrupted and twisted by the time it dropped them off on the icy banks of a black river.

Thousands of eyes stared up at them from murky depths. Further down, Clint could see the river became turbulent as it navigated boulders of skulls, the rapids were populated with bloated corpses that caught in the teeth of the monstrous skulls. The shores were crowded with pale bodies, octopi and crabs crawling from their gaping orifices.

Their vacant eyes caught Clint. "Help us," they moaned.

"Well, that's not creepy at all," Tony said in a weak attempt at humor.

Clint glanced at him. Tony's facemask was flipped back, revealing a tightly lined face.

The ranger shot a look at Natasha, who returned his gaze and nodded almost imperceptibly. They'd both thought that this journey would exacerbate Tony's developing anxiety issues, but they'd also known they couldn't address the issue without impugning his sense of honor.

As blood fell on them from black clouds, Clint thought the issue was probably small potatoes. He doubted any of them would return from here unscathed.

"Where do we go from here?" Bruce asked tightly. Upon their landing, the Hulk had materialized beside Bruce, and he lurked over the scientist's shoulder, scuffing the gruesome ground beneath him with too-big feat. Bruce refused to turn around, and the way he stared steadily ahead told Clint he knew what stood behind him.

The green beast seemed to sense Clint's gaze, regarded him with hooded eyes. Unexpectedly, he smiled toothily, and Clint hesitantly returned it, afraid to anger the beast. Then he broke eye contact and looked to Thor, who held a small amulet in his hand.

"My mother imbued me with the bond that ties all brothers, be they blood or otherwise. Only one path lies before me, and I do not know who waits on the other side."

Above them, lightning ripped across a sky that revealed exposed faces in bloody clouds. The echoing thunder was the sound of a million people dying.

Blood began pouring in reckless abandon. Something _squished_ on Clint's armor, and he looked down to his shoulder—was that_ brain? _Clint though he might be sick, and the urgency to move overwhelmed him.

Behind Banner, the Hulk plucked a particularly meaty bit of flesh off Bruce's head and began to eat it.

"Wherever we go, let's decide quickly," Bruce urged. If he could hear the Hulk behind him, he refused to acknowledge it.

"Why is there only one path? Does that mean they've already found one another?" Clint asked.

"I am unsure. I think it may be the way to my brother," Thor admitted. The light that shot forth from his amulet into the murkiness was tinged green, and he suspected it was the way to Loki. His mother had told him there would be two paths, one green and one blue.

Thor didn't know how to tell the team that Steve's path was suspiciously absent: he could only hope that it meant their Captain was safe and beyond the clawing reaches of Hel's damned.

Thor was afraid that if the team learned Steve's path was absent, they would refuse to continue.

"Oh, hell no! We don't go for him first," Clint proclaimed. "If we have to get anyone out of here, it's Steve."

"I don't know where he is," Thor frowned. "Hel said he had the chance to pass on, perhaps that is why he his hidden from us."

"We don't know that," Tony said. "We don't leave Cap here."

"We should go for my brother, at least we know where he is—" Thor began loudly.

"Steve has done a hell of a lot more for you than Loki ever did," Tony said.

"He is my brother," Thor replied heatedly.

"None of us would be here if it wasn't for Loki!" Tony jabbed a metal finger into Thor's chest, "I don't want to be here longer than we have to be. If anybody deserves to be saved, it's Cap. He wouldn't even be in this mess if it weren't for your brother. We save Cap and we'll see what he says."

"We won't leave without both of them," Natasha cut in sharply. "We're here on a mission. 'Return with both, or not at all.'"

"We go for Loki," Bruce decided calmly.

"Why the hell would we do that?" Tony scowled at him.

"Because that's where Rogers will go," the scientist said firmly.

"How do you know that?" Panic sharpened Tony's words as he continued, "Hel said Steve had the option to go to... Heaven, or whatever. Why wouldn't he choose that over... over this?" The billionaire swept his arm out over the expanse before them.

"If he's crossed into his afterlife, we can't save him. We don't need to, for he has gone home. We go for my brother," Thor argued.

"Cap won't leave a teammate behind," Clint said. He and Natasha had gotten into long discussions over why Steve surpassed any of their earlier leaders, and highest amongst their reasons was the Cap's altruism. "And he'll go after Loki."

"You're holding him in high regard, but he's human, just like the rest of us. Mostly, anyway," Tony corrected. "There's not a day that goes by that he doesn't wax poetic about his team. He gave up Peggy for Loki once, any normal man wouldn't make that decision twice."

"He's not a normal man," Natasha interrupted softly. Tony frowned at her.

"Would a normal man have been able to be willing to give away his only memories of the woman he loved, on the off chance that his enemy might be redeemed? Would a normal man have been able to make us a team?"

Tony considered her words.

"What are you suggesting, then?"

"We go for Loki. Bruce is right, if Steve chose to stay here, that's where he'll go. If we're wrong, the issue is foregone and Steve's safe. I know you don't care for Loki: he's no friend of mine, either, but he's saved both of our asses, and that counts for something. Steve—if he's here at all—is an object in motion. But if what Frigga said is true, Loki isn't going anywhere."

"Howard spent fifty years looking for Steve and we can't—"

"Your father failed in his mission. We won't. We go for Loki."

0o0o0o0o

Thor hadn't been entirely honest with the team. He knew, intrinsically, that saving Steve Rogers was a better bet—not only for Midgard, but for Asgard as well—but his selfish desire to rescue his brother and finally prove his worth over road any desire to do right by his father. If Thor led the team that saved him, Loki might finally love him back.

Loki had changed more in the past year in the presence of a certain Steve Rogers than in thousands of years of effort on Thor's part. He'd almost hated the man for it, but found he couldn't. Captain Steve had done more to repair relations between he and his estranged brother than Thor had ever managed.

Now Steve's team followed him, and it didn't give him quite the sense of reward he had expected. He was borrowing glory.

Maybe he wasn't the leader he always thought he was—after all, he had never seen Steve act selfishly. Steve Rogers was a better leader than Thor could ever hope to be, better, even, than maybe Odin, as Thor had learned his father was too conniving by half. He had never seen the captain manipulate another to further his own agenda.

He'd agreed with Natasha because it was the decision he wanted to make. He could only hope her reasoning was sound.

Thor followed the tenuous, sickly green light across Niflheim, a gleaming black castle growing on the horizon.

As they grew closer, Thor could see it was built from bones, and the skulls embedded in the walls tracked their movement across the field. The chattering of teeth grew louder, but Thor couldn't understand what they were saying. The clinking of bone against bone chilled him: what happened to the dead was meant for the Valkyrie and the Fates. He had never thought to consider what happened to them, and wished he'd never known.

The black gates loomed ominously over them as they approached, seeming to grow impossibly taller the nearer they drew. Thor was afraid of showing indecision, but he was beginning to question the sickly green light that was supposed to serve his way to his brother.

"Loki's in a castle?" Bruce asked.

Thor wasn't as skilled as Loki at deciphering Migardian's tones, but could tell Bruce was skeptical. If his mother's directions were wrong, they were lost. Thor deliberated discussing his worries with the team.

"Asshole. Of course he's living in style while we travel through Hell for him." Tony grumped.

"This _is_ Hel's castle," Thor said uncertainly, "But I do not think we will find Loki here."

"Is this where the path is leading?" Natasha asked.

"It is," he replied uncertainly. The green beam shot from his chest in uneasy light, and Thor wondered what trickery had occurred.

"Then we go forward," Natasha said, and Thor was silently thankful for her guidance and confidence where he had none.

They came to a black moat; souls swam in a mass where water would be. They moved and shifted along as a current, staring up at the team, their fathomless eyes pleading. The bridge across was made of bone, bleached and pale.

Tall spires reached high into the sky, unaffected by the violent lightning strikes that spread across the scorched earth. Before them, skeletal giants clad in armor stood guard. They regarded the Avengers silently, shifting their great spears to allow passage through the gates.

Thor led them forward with more bravado than he felt, squaring his shoulders in an unconscious attempt of confidence.

The halls inside were a corruption of Asgard; black obsidian stood in place of shining marble, and the ragged tapestries depicted souls in various states of torture and loss.

"Jesus Christ, are the tapestries _moving_?" Tony whispered. "There are people _in_ there."

Thor looked again, and realized Tony was right. Twisted creatures, little more than flayed souls, screamed at them silently.

Thor could not give name to the things that tortured them: there were no words in any of the sagas he had ever read.

"I know that man," Natasha's voice was brittle in the cavernous hallways, quiet against the crowd of chattering skulls that marked their passage even now.

Thor looked at her sharply as she continued uncertainly, staring up at a tapestry. The soul inside was being ripped apart by a monster that was mostly bone and teeth.

"I killed him in Belarus six years ago."

"Those are my dead," Bruce realized, standing before another tapestry. "They were just scientists. I killed them when I turned for the first time. They shouldn't be here," Bruce's voice broke, and he raised his hands to his face to shield himself from his dead.

"Look away," Thor ordered with more confidence than he felt. He was ashamed: the only deaths he had seen had been in battle, and those dead did not haunt these halls.

"I'm sorry," Tony was pleading to a mass of souls that were clambering at them from a rotten tapestry of a cave. Thor knew enough about Tony's past to know these were the hapless dead, caused by the weapons Tony's company had made. Thor pulled Tony bodily away.

"Look _away_," he hissed.

"I didn't know!" Tony's voice hitched, his mask back and his eyes bright with unshed tears. "I stopped production of my weapons the moment I did!"

Thor pulled Tony against him and started forward, hoping the team would follow his lead. The footfalls behind him gave him strength, and he could only hope they could keep their heads down long enough for him to find the terminus of his path.

The halls eventually opened into a grand throne room. Hel sat on a throne made of bones and smiled as they entered, black lips peeling back around her crooked teeth. Her hands rested casually on armrests made of skulls. A legion of souls shifted behind her, red eyes staring out at them.

"No," Tony whispered, and Thor didn't have to ask if Tony knew who they were.

"You don't belong here!" Bruce cried out from behind him. Thor glanced back to see Natasha and Clint holding Bruce back. Behind them, the green monster raged, it's eyes bright with pain and anger.

"Welcome to you Thor, and your team of misfits," Hel said laconically, resting her head on her malformed hand. "I expect you are surprised to find me and not those who you seek."

"What deviousness is this?" Thor asked, hoping his voice didn't shake. A warrior wasn't meant for this place, and it frightened him in a way that death never had.

"I trust you did not travel to come to my realm and not expect an audience with me. To do so would be rude. I may have... adjusted your mother's spell accordingly."

Thor floundered. His mother's magic was as true as anything on Asgard. She was the most powerful woman Thor knew, so how could this lowly guardian of the unholy dead corrupt it? His mouth worked uselessly before he cleared his throat, falling back on years of court training in diplomacy.

"We did not come here for you. We are seeking my brother, Loki, and the Midgardian Steve Rogers."

Hel chuckled, settling her bulbous head into a misshapen palm. "Is that fear in your eyes, son of Odin?"

"I do not fear you," he snapped back quickly.

"No, I don't think you do. But my dead are another story, aren't they?" She caressed the skull of her armrest. From this distance, Thor could see the bone was smoothed from years of use.

"They are an abomination."

"Are they?" Hel leaned forward, catching Thor in her lopsided gaze. "Are they really abominations, or are you and yours the repugnant ones, worthy of condemnation?" She motioned to a wraith. It stumbled forward on legs that were little more than bone and sinew, and Thor wondered how the creature was able to stay upright at all. Dry, blond hair hung over its shoulders from the remaining scalp, skin that was little more than leather plastered to the bone.

"This is Dreya. She died in her eighteenth year from fever. Tell me, Thor, did she deserve to be punished for such an inglorious death?"

Thor found he was at a loss for words. He had never questioned the destiny of the dead. The sagas has promised he would die fighting the World Serpent, but that he would vanquish the beast and save the world. He always knew he would go to Valhalla, and he'd never worried about what happened to those who couldn't.

When he was very young, he'd overheard Loki ask what happened to those that didn't die in battle.

"As for those Aesir, Loki—they aren't even worthy of our consideration," the All-father had replied, and Thor had internalized those words and never thought of it again.

"And this is Fregen," Hel motioned to a wraith at her side. "He was crushed to death whilst fixing his family's cart. The wheel had broken, and he hoped to repair it so that his ailing father wouldn't have to. He's here too—Fregen's father—malaise of the heart. Are these simple people _abominations_ because they did not die in some battle over some petty feud?"

"My father's feuds aren't _petty_—"

"No, of course not. And the simple people that died in collateral weren't worthy of his consideration. The ends justify the means, do they not? Who cares what petty commoners—what simple Aesir and humans died—so that Odin's worthy few could feast for a millennia in the shining halls of Valhalla?"

Thor tried to formulate a reply, but his entire world-view was crumbling around him, and he felt he could not do these people justice. He looked at Fregen and Dreya, and they stared back at him with the fathomless sockets, their eyes long rotted away.

"I do not know the past and politics of your people," Natasha said loudly over the moans of the dead, "and that is not why we are here. We have come seeking your permission to find our own dead—Captain Steve Rogers and the one known as Loki."

Hel gave Natasha a considering look, and she smiled a dreadful smile as she leaned back against her throne of bones. "And find them you may. Let me not concern you, be on your way." Hel fluttered her hand to signify that she was done with them.

"And they'll return to us," Clint spoke up. Natasha glanced at him before turning back and adding,

"In full, so they may return to their bodies reserved for them in the Hall of Waiting."

Hel chuckled.

"Wise child of the bow, I see. Fine, I will make a deal."

"Go on," Thor urged. He could handle negotiations, if not Hel's skewering of his perspective, and he did not want to appear weak before his teammates.

"I will allow you to roam my realm, a permission I have never given to the living before. If you find them in time for them to still remember you, you may return with them to the Hall of Waiting. If they have forgotten you, as my dead are wont to do, they are mine to do with as I please," Hel said.

"That sounds fair—" Clint started.

"I am not done. While you are in my realm, I offer you no safe passage. If you become lost and forgetful, if you die, you will stay here forever. If you decide to turn back now, I promise you a safe return. But I have one addendum: either you all go, or you all stay. I will let you discuss the terms amongst yourselves. There is no shame in turning away now. Loki is answering to a life lived of evil deeds and that is not fault of yours."

"What about Steve?" Natasha asked.

"The Midgardian." Hel paused, her misshapen eyes looking into the distance. "He did not belong here, and I allowed him the chance to go home. Whether or not he took it is no business of mine. Now," Hel smiled, revealing sharp teeth, "discuss."

"I didn't sign up for this," Tony said when Thor turned around.

"If Steve's safe, I could care less what happens to Loki," Clint said.

"We don't know if he's safe," Natasha pointed out. "If there's anything I know about Cap, it's that he wouldn't turn his back on a teammate, and that includes Loki."

"Usually I'd agree with you, Nat, but I don't know if even Steve is strong enough to turn away from... from wherever it is he was supposed to go."

"He is my _brother_," Thor said heatedly. "We will not abandon him."

"He's your _adopted_ brother, as you've told us on more than one occasion," Clint argued, crossing plated arms over his breastplate. "Is his salvation really worth the possible deaths of all of us? If we die, we leave Earth unprotected."

"Loki saved you," Thor pleaded.

He wanted nothing more than to storm out of this castle, grab his brother by the scruff of his neck and carry him home. He knew things between them could never be the way it was when they were children, and that was as much his fault as Loki's. He'd listened to his father and his friends, to the Warriors Three: they'd ridiculed Loki for being weak and womanly, for not belonging. Worse, they had laughed at him when they had all adventured to the cold north and Loki had become Jotunn, when they fought and he used magic instead of melee as his choice of weapon.

Thor had thought that teasing Loki into embarrassment would make him change his ways, force him into being more like his older brothers, like Odin.

Instead, he's grown more distanced, his pranks more underhanded, until he was vilified by all of Asgard.

And through it all, Thor couldn't help but feel responsible. It hadn't been until Steve that anyone besides their mother had accepted his brother as he was, magic and subterfuge, and all of it.

"Steve Rogers wouldn't leave my brother behind," Thor realized aloud, breaking up his teammate's arguing. "They're both here."

"You don't know that," Tony accused.

"The Captain had many times on their first journey to abandon my brother, and he did not. In the year since coming back, he has made every attempt to draw my brother in, and he succeeded where I could not. If it were any other—Aesir or Midgardian—I would agree that they had chosen safe harbor over another minute in this wretched place. But not Captain Steve Rogers."

"He's right," Bruce spoke up for the first time since entering Hel's chamber. The figure behind him grumbled in agreement. "Steve wouldn't give up on Loki, just like he's never given up on any of us. We never deserved him as our leader if we turn away from him now."

"Let's say you're right," Tony began, "Even if that were true, we have no idea where he is. Hel says she's got no clue, and this is her freaking realm. How do we find him?"

"_We_ wouldn't," Bruce said. "If we can agree Steve is here, where would he go?"

"To Loki," Tony admitted.

"Right, if we find Loki, we should find them both," Bruce reasoned.

Thor had always like Bruce well enough, if not a bit unpredictable with his wild nature that threatened to overwhelm him at the slightest provocation, but at that moment, he thought he might not have loved the man as much as he did the unassuming scientist.

"What if we're wrong about Steve, and he's not here at all?" Clint frowned.

Thor had an argument primed, but Natasha suddenly grabbed Clint's arm and spoke to him in hushed words. He shook his head, but she continued and Thor saw dawning alight on his face. He nodded slowly, his mouth drawn in a thin line.

When he turned back to Thor, he said, "We go for Loki and pray that Steve's already there."

"Tell her we accept her conditions," Bruce said.

Thor looked at his teammates. Clint returned his gaze evenly, his emotions closed. Thor had never been an expert at women, not Jane, and certainly not Natasha, so what she thought remained a secret. Tony nodded his agreement, although the tense lines around his eyes and mouth betrayed suspicion.

Bruce looked back plaintively, and Thor thought, briefly, that if they were all wrong, that Steve had chosen selfishly, Bruce's world-view would be shattered, and the man that returned would not be the same one that had entered Niflheim.

It would be easier to return to Asgard having never tread another step. They would not be condemned for their failure: indeed, many of the Aesir might silently thank them for failing to return with Loki.

Steve had taught him that leadership was taking the harder choice between two options with the knowledge that even if it was unwanted and difficult, it was ultimately the right decision. Thor knew that if he gave up on Loki, on Steve, it would be the easy choice.

He also knew that he would never sleep easy again. He would forever be the god that had never tried, and he wasn't sure he could look at his mother ever again and be worthy of her love if he turned his back on Loki now.

He certainly wouldn't deserve to be a member of Steve's team.

He turned to the Queen of Niflheim.

"We accept your conditions," he said.

Hel smiled, and briefly, Thor thought that she was actually quite beautiful. Her hair was as long and luscious as his mother's, her form lithe and supple, but when he looked again, she was lopsided and ill-formed, and Thor wondered if her magic was already working its evil on him.

"Well met, Thor and his Avengers. I do not promise the way will be easy. You may not succeed at all. Never before has such a trial taken place. But I give you this knowledge: the decisions you make are you own and free of the machinations of the Fates. That is the reward won by your brother and his bonded. Go forth, and may _Hamingja_ go with you."

Thor raised his eyebrows surprise, and he tilted his head in acknowledgement.

Before he could turn away however, to lead the team out of her forbidding hold, Natasha's asked, "I thought you were meant to safeguard all those that didn't die in battle, not torture them."

Her voice was brittle to the point of breaking, and when Thor looked at her, she was staring at Hel, studiously ignoring her twisted dead in their tapestries.

Hel reached out, caressing the remains of a soul that folded itself at her feet.

"I am simply the Queen of this realm. What the dead do to the dead is not my business: it is the responsibility of you and yours. Thor and his ilk found these souls wanting, why bother with what happens to them after their death?"

"But not I," Natasha returned sharply. "Mine were killed in battle, and yet I see them here."

"I should hardly think back alley assassinations are worthy of the term 'battle'. But do not despair, they are in good company, with those unwitting souls killed in collateral damage: the women in childbirth, the young from disease and the old from their age. Do not name me the villain. I am simply a ward for those Odin found too inglorious for his halls.

"Now go, your dead await your victorious return."

Clint grabbed Natasha's arm before she could argue further. Thor looked over at her, heard her whisper loudly to Clint, "It was my _job_, I never meant to condemn them to... to _this_ place."

"I know," Clint whispered back, refusing to look at his own dead as they chased him across the black weavings.

Thor quickened his pace, not slowing until they'd broken free of Hel's dark halls and crossed her moat of damned souls. The team was silent as they followed, the sound of their feet against stones of bleached bone the only indication that they kept pace with him.

Thor paused when he was sure they were free of the confines of her hall, but still safe within the perimeter. He turned to the team—_his _team, but the thought didn't give him the sense of victory he thought it would have.

"Where to, fearless leader?" Tony quipped.

Thor looked down at the amulet his mother had given him. He no longer held the same regard for it that he once had. If it's path was so easily corrupted by Hel's intervention once, what was to say she wouldn't manipulate it again, lead them into some corner of her realm to wander forever?

He angrily shoved it into his breastplate, determined not to rely on it again before looking up at the team's expectant faces, counting on him to guide them to triumph.

His normal tactics wouldn't work here. In any other situation he would plunge heedlessly forward, and damn the consequences. But now his team relied on him to not only find Loki and Steve, but to bring them all home safely.

Before the Avengers, when it was just Thor and his team of Warriors, they had no fear of death. They knew that they would dine in Valhalla if anything went wrong, and everything that happened before that was just an adventure to toast.

Now, any misstep spelled an eternity of despair, and Thor began to realize what it must mean to be a Midgardian, never knowing what waited once life had run its course.

As the possibility of an eternity of torture lay before him, he could not imagine living his life in such uncertainty, and he suddenly gained an appreciation for the shifting world Midgardians lived in everyday.

"Do you know where he is?" Clint asked, watching him shove the amulet away. "You thought you were taking us to him, and it lead us straight to her. How do you know she won't do that again?"

"I do not," Thor admitted. "I thought my mother's magic incorruptible, but Hel has proved that is not so. We must go forward with no help from my mother. We must rely on our knowledge and on Hamingia."

"What is that?" Bruce asked.

"You call it Luck."

"Great," Tony's tone dripped with the emotion Thor had learned was sarcasm. Loki excelled in it, but Thor had only begun to learn it's finer points.

Red lightning flashed across the broiling sky, revealing the faces of his companions in eerie repose. They were looking at him to say something, and Thor wondered how the Captain always had words of motivation when he surely knew the odds were stacked against them.

Thor had never considered failure an option, but this world was an abomination and he was lost. He forced a smile on his face.

"Captain Steve would never fail us, and we won't fail him. We will find them both."

"Well, _I_ certainly feel better at that declaration," Tony said.

Thor felt his smile falter, sure this was more of Tony's sarcasm, and sorely wishing his brother was there to confirm it for him.

"So, where do we go from here?" Clint asked.

"We go to find my brother," Thor responded with more confidence than he felt.

CHAPTER END


	4. Troubled Stories on my Chest

Troubled Stories on My Chest

_Chasing leaves in the wind,_

_Going where we've never been._

_Said goodbye to you my friend,_

_As the fire spread._

_All that's left are your bones_

Your Bones—Of Monster and Men

Tony had hoped that there were roads or paths or something across Niflheim. At the very least, he would've been happy with signposts that had an arrow and "Loki's eternal damnation THIS WAY."

Instead, they followed Thor's admittedly faulty amulet across a black desert of shifting sands. From the bones scattered across the plain, Tony had the suspicion that it wasn't ground shells from ancient sea creatures that they walked on.

At the risk of sounding childish, Tony had bitten back an, "are we there yet?" at least five times, but it seemed as if they'd been walking forever, and Tony had never liked sand unless it was attached to a beach and there were women (preferably topless) present.

Unsubstantiated ghouls ghosted by them. Occasionally, a more physical creature would stop, mostly bone and tattered flesh and regard them quizzically.

These things that moved around them made no sound as they crossed the shifting sands, and so only the howling wind and the shuffling of their very mortal feet filled the expanse of air around them.

It was a sound he had grown familiar with in Afghanistan, and one he had hoped never to hear again.

"Are we there yet?" Tony finally gave in.

"Tony, what the hell?" Clint groused.

Tony smiled into his mask. He preferred his teammate's griping to that of nothingness. If the world around them was any indication, they would be silence enough for an eternity and so the billionaire would take the complaints over his friends to nothing at all.

"But I mean seriously," he pressed, "I feel like we've already walked a gazillion miles. I'm way past my "minimum steps a day" pedometer count."

"Tony, not now," the ranger snapped.

"Oh, like walking quietly through a spooky wasteland is preferable to a little camaraderie."

He called back to the scientist, "Bruce, how about you, what are you thinking about?"

"Um, seriously?" Bruce's surprise was evident in his voice. "I guess I was thinking about how to create a viable compound that would work selectively on nociceptors without any of the nasty side-effect of modern medicine's current pain-killers."

"What receptors?"

"It's the nerve signals that register pain."

Tony glanced back at the scientist. He flipped his face mask back just so Bruce could see his shock.

"We're walking in the afterlife of an alien world and you're thinking about _nociceptors_?"

Bruce shrugged.

"I can't begin to comprehend this world, so I might as well."

"At least you could be thinking about something important, like how to cure hangovers."

"That's just a build-up of acetaldehyde. Since I'm never hung over, I've never had to worry about it. Maybe that's something you should spend more research money on."

"It _would_ make me billions," Tony mused. "More billions."

"_I_ am thinking about how we should walk quietly, in peace," Clint said.

"We apparently have a whole eternity to look forward to that." Tony emphasized his point by motioning to the growing dead that had begun to follow them across the wasteland, as if they were Moses crossing the desert and would be leading them to salvation in similar fashion.

"Are you telling me you don't recognize them?" When Clint spoke, Tony heard the edge to his voice and realized the man was thoroughly creeped out. The billionaire hadn't thought to seriously look at those that followed them, but when he glanced at them, he wished he hadn't.

He knew many of the faces.

Tony had seen most of them on the "missing persons" wall that had taken up residence in downtown Manhattan, and in the press releases headlined with "15 more killed by Stark weaponry in the Middle East."

"No," Tony whispered, his flippancy deserting him. "They shouldn't be here, this isn't their fault."

"Pay attention," Clint's voice was stark with stress and fear, "and shut up."

Tony lagged behind, trying to pick familiar faces from the crowd, distressed by how many he recognized. He hurried to catch up as the team outpaced him. He'd always hoped that somehow the missing faces were all amnesiacs or people that had faked their deaths to head for greener fields. But there had been so many, and he'd always known it was a pipe dream; certainly, none of New York's hospitals were reporting an obscene number of amnesiacs.

But the vague hope he'd harbored died as the people that ghosted beside them had, and he said, "I didn't know. If I had—"

"None of us did," Natasha replied shortly, cutting the philanthropist off from his train of his thought.

Tony had turned off his war machine years ago once he'd learned the destruction he wrought. He'd hoped to bring solace to the families he'd broken and peace to those for who it was too late. But it had also been a move to bring himself comfort, but as he glanced at his dead, he realized it was an empty hope, bought in ignorance.

He slid his mask home, assaying the readings on the inside of his visor and devoutly ignoring the shades that grew in number around them.

In time, a shape grew on the horizon.

As they grew closer, Tony could recognize distinctive trees and realized they were closing in on a forest. Any relief he had for a change of scenery was quickly replaced by dread as they came closer.

The forest was a thing alive, ancient, dead trees that crawled with knotted roots over the desert floor. In their skeletal branches hung corpses, swinging with each great step of the trees.

A high-pitched keening filled the air, and Tony realized it was emanating from the dead in the trees and the faces embedded in the wood of the trunks.

Tony had to throw his mask up quickly as his stomach roiled when one of the swaying dead looked at him with a grinning skull, its dripping organs rapidly consumed by the hungry roots that moved across the floor.

When Tony was done, he looked up quickly to make sure the team hadn't seen his sickness. He found they were similarly affected by the horrors before them, and would not judge Tony for his weak stomach.

Wiping the bile away from his mouth, he quickly closed his mask once again, but even with the sound dampeners, he could not close out the keening of the dead.

If they got back, Tony was sure there wasn't enough alcohol in the world to drown the things he'd seen.

"Please don't tell us we have to go through that," the ranger said, looking at Thor plaintively. The look the demigod returned was telling, and Clint moaned.

Though they had stopped, the forest continued to grow nearer. The saplings were already closing in on them, and Tony watched in abject horror as the spindly branches of a young ash snatched one of his collected dead. The snapping of bones was loud over the screams of the soul.

"Loki's path shoots through the forest," Thor said. "I do not know how large it is, what lies on the other side, or if there's a way around it at all."

"Well, okay, some woods, what's it matter, right? It's like a nature walk, a terrible, terrible nature walk." Tony's voice was brittle in his own ears, and for a brief moment, he sorely wished they'd taken Hel's offer to return to Asgard.

But he wouldn't wish this place on his worst enemy, and in the last year, Loki had moved up in the ranks, and the billionaire realized that even if Steve weren't here at all (and he wished he wasn't, for Steve's sake, but thought that Nat was right, and Steve wandered this hellish place—alone-in his attempt to save Loki) he couldn't leave the demigod here, no matter the transgressions he'd made.

He'd take all these souls back with him if he could.

"Are you sure," Bruce repeated Clint's question as he motioned toward the woods, "that this the only way forward?"

Tony had never seen Thor afraid before, but he recognized the fear evident on his face now, and Tony's own panic grew.

"I'm sure," he said grimly.

"Okay, then, we go forward," Natasha declared, and she stepped into the broiling maelstrom of living trees.

Tony was afraid that the trees would close on them, would seek to consume them with the same veracity that they attacked the dead, but as they cleared the edge of the forest and entered its bowels, Tony let out a sigh of a relief. The trees moved past them, continuing forward on their unknown mission. The army of dead that had grown around the Avengers were not so lucky, and the mechanic winced as each new soul was caught up in the carnivorous branches.

Once they were well into the depths of the forest, Tony turned glance back at Bruce to make sure he was keeping up, and so he saw when the Hulk managed to stumble into the trunk of a truculent oak. It snapped back with a rapid whip of its branch, and the Hulk roared in response, a giant green fist thudding into one of the faces in the trunk.

Any safe passage they'd been awarded was gone, and thee forest became a swirling maelstrom of anger and hate.

"Run!" Thor shouted, and Tony didn't need to be told twice. Finding himself unsteady on the moving forest floor, he tried to fire his rocket boosters up only to find them unresponsive.

"Super," Tony said, and ran.

0o0o0o

Natasha had seen the Hulk's stumble and had started moving away with haste even before the tree retaliated. She hadn't been prepared for the chaos that erupted around them, and while she had always praised herself for being nimble, she found that running across a moving mass of roots and captured dead was a nearly impossible task—she barely managed to dodge another root just before it skewered her. She hardly had the chance to pay attention to the team to know that they were similarly engaged.

"What is this? Some sort of _Evil Dead_ reprise?" Tony's voice was tinny behind his mask, and he blasted a tree that lumbered towards him.

"Come _on,_" Bruce grabbed Tony's arm, pulling him forward. They quickly learned that violence had little effect on the forest—Tony's blasts only served to stun them, and Natasha swore that they fed off it, suspected that the trees that they grew taller with each new blast.

A man in tattered clothes screamed in terror as he tripped over a root and was rapidly set on upon by a corrupted elder tree that tore remaining flesh from bone before absorbing the remnants of the soul into its wood.

Natasha started in terror as the man's face appeared in the wood, joining a host of others that all screamed in rising pitch.

Natasha considered herself a survivor and a purveyor of the macabre, but even in her worst dreams, she had never imagined anything of this caliber.

"Shit! Bruce!" Natasha heard Clint gasp. She glanced over her shoulder, seeing Bruce had gotten caught up in the squirming roots of an old willow. Every effort he made to free himself resulted in him becoming further ensnared.

Natasha hesitated. She should save him, but she couldn't figure a way to do it without getting caught as well.

Something fell on her shoulder, and she looked down to see a branch curling around her arm. Slashing out with her knife, she severed the branch from its host in a spray of burning ichor as she spun away. The tree howled in outrage and moved towards her with a speed she would never have considered possible.

They'd waited too long, and the trees were on them. Natasha heard a roar, and the Hulk was moving, tearing away the roots that bound Bruce. Satisfied that he would be safe, she focused on dancing away from the tree that closed in on her.

"We have to get out of here," she yelled.

"I'm _trying_," Tony snapped.

"I'm free," Bruce shouted. "Let's go!"

The Hulk was a force even in this realm, and it tore mindlessly at the things around them, freeing a path through the trees. Natasha kept pace, darting over moving roots and cloying branches.

The whole world was captured in the deep red of an old wound, the resounding rumble of a deafening thunder burst almost instantaneous. The trees started screaming wordlessly, and as acrid smoke drifted into her nose, Natasha realized the forest was on fire.

She felt heat on her cheek, and glanced over. The rowan next to her was in flame, and all the faces in its trunk screamed as fire licked their wooden faces. The tree lurched towards her, ash falling down as its wood peeled, not in a way dissimilar to charred flesh.

She'd looked away at the wrong moment, and she fell as her foot got caught in the roiling roots of a burning tree. She hit her knee against a knobby root, pain shooting through her leg.

There was a hand on her elbow, pulling her up and forward.

"Come on, Nat," Clint's voice was scratchy already from the pooling smoke. The fire was spreading unnaturally fast, and it seemed as though the whole forest was afire. Smoke burned in her eyes and lungs. He couldn't hold on to her—the ground was too unstable. She reached out to grab him, but he stumbled away, disappearing into the black smoke.

"Clint!" She shouted, coughing from the effort.

"This way!" Tony shouted, pulling on her. He was in the best shape of all of them, protected by his suit and Natasha wondered painfully if he could see an end to this forest.

"Thor, are we almost through?" Bruce coughed. He had his shirt tucked over his nose, his shoulders hunched in a subconscious attempt to protect his airway. Natasha wanted to tell him it was a useless gesture, though she thought he probably already knew it.

As they stumbled through the broiling inferno, hoping Clint was right behind her, Natasha reflected on the decisions she'd made in her life that had lead her here.

For a woman who had always considered herself a survivor, she thought it was fairly ironic that being an assassin had a higher life expectancy than that of an Avenger.

Natasha felt a cough bubble up in her chest, and her diaphragm seized unexpectedly. She knew if she breathed too deeply, she'd only be inhaling poisonous air.

Natasha had never been afraid of death before, but the thought of spending her afterlife in his nightmare frightened her in a way nothing on Earth ever had, and she ignored the discomfort in her chest and the pain in her knee as she ran as hard as she knew how.

Just as she thought she would never breathe easy again, she broke through the inferno. Clearing as much as the fiery maelstrom as she could, she coughed deeply, her ribs complaining from the effort, knee throbbing with every cough, and she could tell from the difficulty it took to move it that it was swelling rapidly.

Thor was beside her, hands on his knees as he fought for air a long time coming. He hacked out black phlegm, and it landed on the ground with a wet sound.

Satisfied that she'd cleared the smoke from her lungs, Natasha straightened in order to take accountability. Wiping soot from leaking, swollen eyes, she scanned the field for her teammates. Bruce was headed towards them, the Hulk taking great, lumbering steps behind him. Tony's suit was blackened, but he appeared unscathed as he closed in on Natasha.

"Where's Clint?" she croaked hoarsely, stifling another cough while searching the shifting forest. The souls that had been lucky and gotten out were shifting on the perimeter of the forest, howling to lost friends that remained trapped in the furnace.

The forest was little more than an inferno. The screams of the trees and their captured dead died slowly in long, lingering screams, and Natasha shuddered. Would they be treated thus, if they died? Would they become the faces in the sky or the corpses that washed up on the shore? Or did Hel have something much worse, much sinister prepared for them if they failed?

"Clint," She screamed as she realized he was _in there_ and he was _dying_.

She was a force in motion, her head ducked against the pooling smoke. Just before she'd entered the burning forest, she was yanked back by a strong hand on her shoulder, keeping her out of the fiery forest. The movement almost yanked her shoulder from her socket and she fought against it with blind determination, but the hand refused to budge.

Natasha wheeled around, staring at the massive figure of the Hulk.

"It should be _me_," she howled, her breath hitching around short _chuffs_ as she sought to return air to her lungs. Despite her protestation, the Hulk held fast, allowing her to beat on him.

"You won't survive that," Bruce pulled Natasha away from the Other Guy, bringing her to his chest as he assayed the molten forest with watery eyes. The trees had stopped moving, and Natasha tried not to dwell on what that might mean.

"He's _in_ there," she screamed at Bruce, "_Clint's in the forest_," she delivered a rapid blow to Bruce's liver, not enough to really hurt him, but he let go. Before she could get very far, the Hulk had grabbed her again.

"Let go of me," she raged. "He'll die!"

"_You'll_ die if you go in there!"

"I'll go after him," Tony said. His armor was burnt and parts of it were glowing red, but he remained relatively unscathed. He clanked forward. "Wait here," he said, "I'll be back."

"I don't think your armor is suited for those temperatures," Bruce cautioned.

Tony's voice was cocky as he responded.

"If I can take subzero temperatures in space, I'm pretty sure I can take a little fire." He disappeared into the black smoke.

Once the forest had enveloped Iron Man, the Hulk's grip on Natasha loosened. She looked up at the great green monster before she looked back into the furnace. Her sight was blurry from the collected smoke, and as she waited, she wondered about Clint, about Cap. The burned trees and their dead stared at her from charred faces.

If they failed in their mission, Clint and Steve could easily become one in their number. She tried to think of Steve as a mindless monster that attacked anything that grew too near, hungry for its life and jealous for the living memories it still bore. She couldn't picture it—it didn't line up with everything she knew about him.

"Is the ground moving?" Bruce asked suddenly.

"I think you may be right," Thor agreed, glancing down at the earth. The rocks were shaking, and standing became a feat in of itself when the quaking grew more violent. "What sorcery is this?"

"Clint!" Natasha shouted as she was almost thrown to the ground, Thor's hand on her shoulder steadying her as the ground shook.

The Hulk roared, and started charging away from them, running north, parallel to the forest. Bruce looked at Thor and Natasha with wild eyes. "I have to get him!" He said, taking off after his other self.

Natasha cast her misgivings aside and started back into the forest, struggling over the shifting ground. Thor grabbed her arm.

"We cannot! We said we would wait, and so we must!"

"We're weaker apart!" She shot back.

Thor's response was lost in the furious heaving of the earth, and Natasha's stomach fell as the world suddenly shifted and turned. She was shot into the air violently, the ground still moving beneath her. When the world stopped, she realized a cliff had formed between them and the forest. Hundreds of feet below, she could see a tiny Bruce looking up at them, the Hulk a moving shadow that outpaced them.

Bruce shouted something, but his words were lost in the crackling forest and shifting rocks, and Natasha would've asked him to repeat, had Thor not pulled her away from the cliff.

She watched in bewilderment as the ground she'd just been occupying slid away from the newly formed edge, crashing down the sheer cliff in a deafening clatter.

0o0o0o0o

The sound of stone moving against stone was as excruciating as claws on a chalkboard, and Bruce shuddered.

He watched as Thor and Natasha shot away from him in stunning speed, lifted up onto the newly formed cliff, several hundreds of feet above him. His breath caught in his chest as he saw Thor teeter on the edge. When he disappeared over the side, Bruce found his breath come easier.

When the world stopped moving, Bruce kept looking up, relief flooding him as he saw Natasha stick her head over the side.

"We'll come for you!" He shouted. He couldn't tell if she heard, because she was ripped away from the edge abruptly. Bruce realized belatedly that a mountain of falling rock was headed for him. He searched for the Other Guy, found him loping forward in great steps.

Bruce took off in pursuit. The sound of the rock behind him was nearly deafening, and Bruce could feel chips of breaking rock clip his feet. He had never been much for exercise, but he ran for as far and as long as he could. When he had finally caught up, Bruce allowed himself to stop, his breath coming in great, heaving gasps. If they returned, he would take Steve up on his offers to join him on morning jogs.

Once the air had been suitably returned to gasping lungs, he straightened. Looking around him, he realized that they were well and truly lost. He looked at the Other Guy, who seemed largely unfazed by their current predicament.

"You separated us!" Bruce raged, feeling foolish for addressing his hulking companion, sure he couldn't understand language.

"No," The Other Guy agreed, startling Bruce.

"We could be up there with Natasha and Thor! Now we're separated, and it's your fault! Why did you run?"

"Go forward," The Other Guy said. "Sometimes, only way."

"If you had just _stayed_."

"Not a dog,' the Hulk said petulantly. "Sometimes, forward is the best way."

Bruce looked in the direction his monster had taken them. Meager fields of trampled grass lay before them. The path behind them was clogged with fallen rock, and the smoldering forest lay to their right. Bruce sighed.

"Okay," he agreed resignedly, "we go forward."

0o0o0o0o

Tony sorely missed JARVIS' narration. The AI had an ability to make sense of the world, and on this alien planet, he missed his observations more than ever.

Feeling more alone than ever as he plunged into the smoldering remnants of the forest, he tried to ignore the moans that had replaced the screaming dead. A charred hand grabbed his ankle, and he shouldered forward, refusing to acknowledge the tearing sound of charred bone ripping free from its host.

Even without JARVIS, Tony knew the temperatures he was subjecting his suit to surpassed those he had tested for. He ignored the warning chimes that rang in his ears.

"Clint!" He cried, climbing over fallen trees.

Minutes ago, they had been trying to trap him. Now, he couldn't help but feel sorry for them. Tony had never tried to dwell on his afterlife, had often thought the cheery scenes of fluffy clouds and haloed individuals the refuge of the masses.

Tony wondered if he would have been quite so cavalier in living if he had known this was what waited. He'd never considered himself part of any religion—had mocked Cap's Sunday visits to his family church, never mind if it brought him closer to his dead.

With each passing moment that he spent in Niflheim, he doubted they would find Steve. He hoped that if he ever saw Steve again, either living or dead, he would have the chance to apologize.

Unlike those that pressed their beliefs unto others, Steve had only ever tried to be the best man that he could be. If Tony was honest, he could understand why Howard had spent so much time searching for his lost captain.

Steve wasn't a perfect man, but he was the best one Tony had ever met.

He wished he hadn't harassed him quite so badly. He'd projected the hatred he'd had after a life of missed Christmases and birthdays in favor of a doomed mission onto the man he'd always deemed responsible.

Captain America was never supposed to be found. He was supposed to be a myth, like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus: just another representation of Howard's empty promises.

On Steve's recovery, Tony had felt a certain victory that he was alive when his father was not to welcome America's prodigal son home. Now, he only felt guilty.

As he passed further into the forest, the moans of the dead quieted. Charred souls became unrecognizable: a heap of carbon that melded with fallen trees.

The hope that Tony might find Clint faded with each step, and he began to second-guess himself. Perhaps it had been folly to willingly separate the team. But the thought of leaving a teammate had sat wrong, and he couldn't let Nat come in here, she wouldn't have survived, and then it would have been both of their death's on his growing tally card.

He thought he heard a groan and stilled. His sensors were shot to hell—everything burned red, and he couldn't decipher what was still living in this dead world. Thinking he may have imagined it, Tony readied to move again when he heard the groan again, louder this time.

"Clint?" Tony shouted in the gloom. "Clint!" He repeated louder, as he heard the sound again. He was moving over broken wood as he followed instinct. He tripped suddenly and fell roughly. Turning to see what had snagged him, his heart skipped as he saw a smoldering breastplate evident in the gloom.

Afraid of what he might see, he crawled over to the prone body. Reaching the body, he rolled it over.

Clint's eyes were shut and his skin blistered. Worse, there was no detectable sign of life, no movement of his chest, no wheezing through his nose. Tony sat back heavily against a charred tree trunk, a sob sticking in his throat. Around him, the charred faces of the trees and their captured souls looked down at him accusingly.

Tears streamed unchecked down his face. Sliding back his mask, he rubbed at them with the too-hot metal of his gloved hands. When the pain grew too great, he pulled his knees to his chest and sobbed. Settling smoked gathered in his lungs and he coughed.

Over his fit, he heard a groan. He looked up sharply. Clint remained as still as ever, but he groaned again.

"Clint!" Tony clambered to the ranger's side, shaking his shoulder.

Clint sputtered beneath him, heaving a great breath that ended in a coughing fit. Bright blue eyes shot open, and he managed a pained smile.

"Clint Barton checking in for duty."

Tony fell back onto his knees, his laughter dissolving into sobs.

"I thought I'd lost you."

Clint struggled to a sitting position. His skin was blackened and charred in places, and soot marred his features. He wiped a hand over his face, smearing soot across his face. When he finally stopped coughing, he scrubbed a hand through his charred hair. Pulling out broken stands, Clint regarded them carefully.

"Is Natasha okay?"

"She's fine. What happened?" Tony pressed.

"I fell," Clint said admitted sheepishly. "I thought I saw…" he trailed off. "It was only an illusion," he finished.

"You're safe now. Can you stand?" Tony looked askance at Clint.

He knew that he could carry him a distance before auxiliary power cut out, but the sensors were suspect, and he wasn't keen on using all his reserves without an end in sight. He hoped the team had waited: was afraid they hadn't, that they couldn't.

The ranger tried and stumbled. Tony was under his shoulder, bolstering him up before he fell.

Tony let out a grunt as Clint's collected weight fell on him. Clint tried again to bear his own weight.

"You can't carry me," he insisted.

"It's okay, I've got you," Tony said with more confidence than he felt. He equated how much power he had left after the useless attack on the forest. He suspected it wasn't good.

"It's just a twisted ankle," Clint said. "We can make a crutch out of wood."

Tony didn't have to sweep the smoldering glen to know they'd find no weight-bearing sticks here. He chanced a look at his teammate; Clint's face was haggard and pale beneath the soot. He was in more pain than he let on, and any weight on his injured leg caused him to wince. Catching Tony's stare, he straightened his shoulders and forced a ghost of a grin on his face.

"I'm okay, Tony. Let's get back to the team."

"Okay," Tony agreed reluctantly. "They made it out of here safely. Should be waiting for us on the other side."

When they made their way out of the smoldering ruins of the forest, Tony stopped shortly as he peered at a cliff that he didn't recognize.

"What's up?"

"I left them in a field. I don't recognize this at all," Tony began uneasily. He had thought they'd returned the way he'd come, but the imposing cliff before them was wholly unfamiliar. He wondered when he had gotten turned around—was reluctant to enter the forest of the dead to retrace their steps.

"What do you mean this wasn't here before?" Clint asked sharply.

"I _mean_ there wasn't a cliff here before."

"So did you take us out the wrong way?"

"No, I didn't," the billionaire snapped, but he wasn't so certain. He mentally retraced his steps, but couldn't think of where he'd gone wrong.

"Well then, where the hell is Nat and everybody else?"

"I don't _know_," Tony snapped. "There wasn't even a cliff here before."

"So you took us the wrong way," the ranger accused.

"I just said I didn't."

"So how do you explain any of this?" Clint waved to the cliff and the distinct lack of their teammates.

"I _don't_," Tony snapped. "Slow your roll, Barton. We'll find them."

"How do we do that? Do we tap our heels together three times? Or maybe wish on a star? I would, except, _oh_, I can't see any because the sky is covered in _blood_."

Tony looked up into the sky, splashes of blood falling on his face. His mouth thinned. He owed it to Pepper, to the team, and to Steve to find them and return.

"I don't know, Clint, but we don't have a lot of options. Let's go."

Chapter End

Bruce's comment about a compound that works selectively on nociceptors, the pain receptors of the body, is something I know biochemist at UNC are actively working on—the problem is that while they've created a model on the computer that would ostensibly do this, creating the actual biochemical molecule is proving to be a pretty difficult task.

Thanks loads of the kudos and comments. I hope everybody's enjoying this!


	5. If Your Skeletons Refuse to Walk

Chapter 4 If Your Skeletons Refuse to Walk

_I can't take it when you rattle my bones but you're locked in a cage with me._

_And you can't stand it when you're all alone but you've gone and thrown away the key._

_The moonshine's dripping from the white of your eye but your lips are too scared to speak._

-Ballroom Bones, The Cermonies

Hel sat on her throne of skulls, her eyes resting on the place the Avengers had been. For the first time since being delegated to this vile realm, she had been invited to Odin's table and the living had come to her. In all her days, nothing of this magnitude had happened and something not unpleasant stirred in her chest. For so long she had looked forward to Ragnarök because it would serve as disruption to this drudgery. She'd never thought there was another option, but Loki and his human had managed to upset the Fates in a way no one else ever had.

Hel had not always been so sullen. She hated what she had become; what a life in her dark realm had made her, what the Fates had written of her.

In the beginning when the worlds were young and the Aesir naïve, she had been beautiful, her skin pale and smooth, her luxurious hair, well kept, fell about her shoulders in curls. She was regaled as one of Asgard's finest, and she was proud.

In those days, she could have had the arm of any Aesir, but it was Njörð, the god of the sea that stole her heart. He was older than any of her beaus by double, but he carried himself with a quiet bearing that Hel respected. He always greeted her kindly, and most importantly, he could make her laugh.

Left to his devices, he spent his time away from Asgard, on the stony shores of Midgard's North Sea, and Hel had visited him there on many occasions. She could still remember their dalliances on the cold outcroppings, the way the wind tangled her hair and brushed her face. She thought she could never know a place as beautiful as the ocean and the god that ruled it.

But she'd caught the eye of the god of vengeance, Vioarr. An ugly, angry man, he was quick to take offense and held perceived grudges with an obsession Hel could never quite understand.

She rebuffed his advances, but he was persistent. In those days, he was one of Odin's closest confidants, and he convinced him to keep her at court and away from Njörð,

On one feast day in honor of some dead warrior, she'd secreted away to find her love. Instead, Vioarr had found her. He'd tried to take her as his own, but she'd hit him when he persisted. He'd reacted violently, slashing her face open with his axe. She'd been too ashamed to find the healers, and by the time Frigga found her, the ruin was done. She was no longer the prize at court, and the gods shunned her for her disgrace.

Frigga knew her secret, but she was not as powerful then as she was now, and they were women in confidence. Hel was afraid of Odin, and what he might do; what lie Vioarr might be whispering in his ear.

Not much later, Njörð was traded to Skadi in a rotten marriage deal that was meant to pose as recompense of her father.

On the day Njörð took Skadi to his watery home, Hel wept.

When the decision came to create a realm for those that died ingloriously, not fit to reside in Valhalla, Vioarr had nominated Hel as the ruler. In those days, the Fates had not yet finished penning their sagas, and countless lost souls roamed the worlds with no place to call home. Their unremarkable deaths meant they had no place in Valhalla's hallowed halls, and Vioarr said it was only fitting that one as inglorious as they preside over them.

Odin agreed, and Hel was given ownership over a distant branch of Niflheim, see to do with as she saw fit. Still hurting from the seeping wound that marred her face, Hel allowed the souls to run rampant: to build a kingdom as she holed herself away both in pain and in sorrow. When she came out of hiding, she found to her astonishment that they had created a twisted and appalling place.

"Why do you do this?" She asked an old warrior dead from age instead of battle.

"We must pay penance," he said. "We are unfit to celebrate our lives in Valhalla. We did not die in battle, and so we failed in life."

The old and the diseased, the women dead from childbirth, and the children from sickness all joined her motely ranks. As their number grew, Hel resolved to orchestrate a way back to the living for them. For many years, she pondered how she might succeed without Odin knowing. Eventually, she realized that if she could get her souls to forget the world they'd left, she could return them unborn into the wombs of expecting mothers.

Forgetting was not easy: decades of living took centuries to erase. She had pondered this as she constructed trials for the dead to pass through. With each one succeeded, the soul forgot who they had been, but it was a hard won victory and after centuries of watching, she realized it was because every single one of her denizens were proud, in one form of another, of what they'd done while living, and they were loathe to forget it.

"I'm sending you back to the world," she told the fragment of a soul that had been a farmer. "So that you may die in battle and dine in Valhalla's glorious halls."

"I am not a warrior," he said. "I never was. But somebody has to feed the soldiers. That some one is me. Even when you send me back—my heart will always know I was always meant to be a grower, a cultivator of the earth. In fifty years, I will see you again. I will never die in battle."

"But you will feast, and your acts heralded in song."

"My lady, I do not care about that. I was a simple man, and I will always be a simple man. But I embrace it."

And when the day came that they'd almost forgotten what it had meant to be living, Hel ferried their souls back to the worlds of the living. Some returned to her in short order, some succeeded and died in battle, off to enjoy their eternity in Valhalla. She long pondered the words of the simple farmer, and found he was not alone—the masses of humanity were largely content to live and die in their world, and had little interest in the machinations of the Fates or the gods.

But she continued to send them back to the world of the living; so that they might have some respite for her dark realm, for by that time the Fates had finished their Sagas. She'd read the great tome and when she was finished, she'd closed the book with a heavy heart. They had written that her realm was a terrible place, full of despair and loss, and so it was written, so it must be.

But Hel continued her pathway back to the living for her lost souls, and nobody cared, because the simple folk were beneath the concerns of the All-father and his ilk.

But for those souls that were corrupted when they came, those dark souls that had murdered others, had preyed on the weak, those, Hel kept. For when the Fates had finished penning their sagas, and Hel learned she would be bringing an army against Odin's hallowed few, she knew she had to be ready.

She wouldn't lose to him twice.

Asgard settled into a steady rhythm, but she was a goddess removed, and with each passing year, as she watched Loki evolve from the clever prankster into Aesir's most hated, she'd known why. Loki was fated to join her ranks of the unwanted dead, and Hel found she had compassion for him because of it. She did not envy his role, his fate even less, cursed as he was. Even now, he howled and twisted in the bowels of her corrupted branch and she felt guilty that she could not do more to ease his waiting.

She did not have the courage to refute the Fates.

Instead, she'd sworn to herself not to intervene with the passages of the humans and the Aesir that had come to rescue Loki and his bonded. What that one—that Steve Rogers—did, was unbeknownst to her. He'd fallen off her purview once he'd chanced across the bleeding between religions, to the river Jordan that offered the crossing to his own earned afterlife. Never before had a soul been sent unjustly to her realm, and she hoped the Midgard had taken his way out.

But as her souls updated as to the whereabouts of the rescue team, now scattered, she found herself rooting for them. They were tortured souls, all of them, and yet she hoped they might succeed in a way she never had.

0o0o0o0o0o

On the top of the newly formed cliff, there was nothing to buffer the wind, and although they couldn't see the sun, the air was excruciatingly hot. Thor could feel his lips splitting already, his eyes stinging from the dust that was being blown into it. Her hair whipped around her unchecked, errant strands catching in the corners of his eyes and sticking from the dried tears that his eyes produced in a failed attempt to lubricate them. He could feel his cape pull him back towards the edge of the cliff. He unclasped it, and watched the wind snatch it, whispering it over the edge.

Natasha' hair whipped around him in similar fashion, her short hair wild. They stared at one another.

"This is a strange realm," Thor said. "I do not understand it."

Natasha laughed in spite of their situation. "You certainly have a way with words."

The demigod's brow furrowed. "That was not meant to be a joke."

"I know—" Natasha began, her face pensive as she watched his cape drop over the side of the cliff. She looked back over the side of the cliff, her gaze indiscernible as she assayed the smoldering forest below.

"We cannot go back that way," Thor said, his words stolen from him by the wind almost as soon as he'd spoken.

"You have the amulet. Can you still see Loki's path?"

The wavering beam of green that connected Thor to Loki was intermittent at best, and Thor had reason to question its validity at all. His mother's magic was weak here, and Hel had already skewed it once in her favor. She could be leading them into a trap, but Thor didn't know where else to go.

Thor had never excelled at mind games. He was a man of action and deliberation. When they were children, he'd left the scheming to Loki, knowing that while Loki would never excel physically, he could think out any problem; help Thor with strategy and tactics. He could see things in a way Thor never did, was a master of word craft and cleverness. The skill had gained Loki a tarnished reputation long before his actions: such things were not prized among the warrior class of the Aesir. Like magic, it was a skill best left to women.

But Thor had seen Loki get what he wanted through words, and he'd come to respect his brother for it.

But he'd never found the words to tell him so, had ridiculed Loki's obvious failings instead of praising his strengths. He was convinced that he was partially, if not wholly, responsible for Loki's turn towards darkness.

Now more than ever, he wished his brother were beside him. He would be able to see the trickery behind Hel's ploys and direct them to victory.

"The last time I was somewhere this hot when I was on a mission in Afghanistan."

"Asgard never grows this hot, but your Arizona compares."

Natasha chuckled. "Yeah, but with a little less war."

"Not when I was there! My friends came to help us fight the greatest beast we had ever fought! It was very formidable."

"I read about your incursion in Arizona. You're not one for subtlety, I've gathered. But your brother seems to have that trait locked down."

"My brother…" Thor said. "You have spoken with him since he's come to live in your tower," Thor said. Natasha glanced at him in surprise. Her eyes squinted against the wind forming crow's feet, the stress evident on her face, and Thor realized in that instant, that Natasha Romanov was growing old. In a few short decades, she would be dead. The thought saddened Thor.

"Yes," the Black Widow agreed. "He sought me out."

Natasha stumbled, and she winced. Thor offered her his arm. After a moment's hesitation, she took it, her weight on him slight. He had broken his arm when he was but a child, and his mother had healed him with love and a word. She'd wrapped his arm in a poultice, and doted on him in a way he'd only seen her act with Loki. He'd been intensely jealous of his brother, wondering why he was the subject of her daily care. He'd never stopped to think that Odin largely ignored Loki; spoke to him only when necessary and with gruff words.

"He seems to like you," Thor told Nat.

"Your brother is a confused man," she said.

"When we were young, he was the funniest of us all. His pranks were the source of much joy, and the gods praised his cleverness."

They stepped around a skeleton. Wind and time had stolen its features, but as they passed it snapped a boney arm out, wrapping its fingers around Natasha's ankles. Natasha kicked it away.

"What happened?" She asked.

"We grew older," Thor said. When he was young, Tyr had told him that regret was an emotion befitting only of losers. He'd relayed Loki the words of wisdom, ignoring the glint in his green eyes as he absorbed the information. Thor had lived by those words, never questioning his own actions until the day that his brother turned against him.

Now, he knew that Tyr had been wrong, and regrets were something he'd grown well acquainted with.

"Perhaps I should have told him I was wrong, and that I am sorry."

"Thor, he knows that already," Natasha looked up at the demigod. This close to her, Thor could see the tiny lines in her face that marked her own aging, and although she was still young by humanity's standards (and really, a child, in the eyes of the Aesir.) he knew it would not be long before stress and time wore away the lines of her faces until they were permanently etched on her features.

He had lived for millennia, and he'd never been bothered to consider just how brief the life of a Midgardian was.

"I am not sure—"

"Stop it. I saw the way he looked at you when you carried him to Asgard. It was not a look born in hate. He loves you Thor, and the sooner you get that in your thick head, the sooner you can stop beating yourself up about it."

"Natasha, you are so wise and observant, but why have you not returned the affection Clint Barton shows for you?"

The assassin looked away, her eyes squinting against the blowing wind. When she spoke, it was so quiet that Thor would not have heard her at all had she not been pressed against him. "Clint is my best friend."

"Jane is my best friend. I can speak openly to her, without fear of judgment. I do not have to be my father's son or a prince around her, she does not care for those things."

"We have been friends for a very long time," Natasha said by way of explanation.

Thor looked at her quizzically. "Would that not make you both better suited to progress your relationship?" Thor watched her. Her face was a study in stoicism but after a year spent with the Avengers, Thor had learned that humans were quite adept at hiding their feelings.

"You're afraid," he realized. "But why?"

"I will tell you a story," his companion said. "It is one my mother told me. I do not remember her very well, and I hated her for a long time."

Thor said nothing, waiting patiently for her to continue.

"Before I went to bed, she used to read to me, every night. This is the story of the Queen of Spades," Natasha said.

"Okay," Thor agreed, uncertain of where Natasha was going. She was a woman deliberate in her actions, and Thor could not picture her as a child.

"'In St Petersburg in the 1800's, an ethnic German officer named Hermann was stationed with the engineers in the Imperial Russian Army. His comrades constantly gambled, but he never played himself. One night, another officer named Tomsky told the story of his grandmother, a Countess, who in her youth loved to gamble. One day, she lost her fortune while in Paris. She found the mysterious Count St. Germain, who passed onto her a secret of three cards to play in succession. After that, she only used this secret twice: once to save herself, and then several years later to help a young gambler. Hermann was fascinated by this story, and wondered if he could learn the Countess's secret."

Natasha stumbled, and Thor tightened his grip around her. She pushed him away, resuming her painful, labored pace.

"The Countess had grown old, well into her eighties, and she was a greedy woman who dwelled in the past. Her daughter, a girl adopted, was a young woman named Lizaveta Ivanova, whom Hermann began to court. Soon, they were exchanging love letters and Lizaveta wrote to her suitor, telling him how to enter the house and meet her secretly. But Hermann was not a man in love: he was only interested in the Countess' secret.

"Hermann snuck into the house while the Countess and Lizaveta were at a ball. He hid himself in the Countess' room, and when the old woman returned, he revealed himself. He begged for her to tell him the secret of the cards, and when she did not, he threatened her with a pistol. The old woman died from fright, and so Hermann went to Lizaveta's room and told her what had transpired.

"Knowing that she had been used and heart broken, Lizaveta still helped him escape from the house. Three days later, Hermann went to the old woman's funeral, and when he approached the coffin, he thought he saw the old woman wink at him. Agitated, her returned home."

Thor kicked away a ghoul that had grown close, its decrepit hand pulling on his leg. It moaned piteously as dried flesh tore, and Thor ignored it as best he could, looking instead at his companion.

Natasha's face was pale under her red hair as she watched him, her eyes dark pools under the red sky. Satisfied Thor was still with her, she squared her shoulders and continued her tale as she walked.

"That night, the Countess appeared to him as an apparition. She told him that against her will, she had come to tell him what he wanted to know. To win any game, the three cards he must play were: three, seven, and an ace. But the knowledge came with two conditions: that he could never gamble again, and that he had to marry Lizaveta.

"Hermann spent the next few days wondering what to do, should he abide by the old woman's advice, or make his fortune? He did not love Lizaveta, but she was sweet to look upon and had inherited her grandmother's wealth. But then he met a wealthy gambler from Moscow, named Chekalnisky. Hermann went to a party he was hosting and was coaxed into playing a game of cards. He played his first card, a three, and won a large sum of money. The other players quit the game, and Hermann left that night a rich man.

"Hermann decided to return the second night, and wagered his entire fortune on his second card played: a seven. He won again, and women were at his arm. He became quite popular, and he relished in his ill-gotten glory. Lizaveta was far from his mind; here were women of power and beauty, and he could have any he chose.

"He should quit," Thor said. "While he has the chance."

"He should have," Natasha agreed before continuing.

"The third night, Hermann returned and once again staked everything. But instead of an ace, he got the Queen of Spades. Hermann recognized the face staring back up at him as that of the Countess, and she winked at him. He lost everything, and he knew the Countess had triumphed, even from the grave. He went mad, spouting rhetoric about these magic cards until he was committed to an insane asylum, where he spent the rest of his days."

"What happened to Liza?" Thor prompted. Natasha looked back at him.

"She married a civil servant, and raised a poor relation."

"Nobody won," Thor said, affronted. His boot slipped on a rock, and he stumbled.

"It's not a Disney movie," Natasha agreed.

"But I don't understand, what does this have to do with Clint Barton? He is a more honorable man than that Hermann, and would never treat you such."

"Clint's not the one that made a deal with the devil," Natasha said.

0o0o0o0o0o0o

The rocky path had given way to fields that had briefly resembled rich grass until Bruce found that the blades were sharp glass that shattered with each step. Souls had been caught on their edges, little more than wisps, like cotton caught on a splinter, and their pleas for help were little more than quiet mews. Bruce found it thankfully easy to ignore them.

His clothes unprotected by armor caught on the blades, shredding them relentlessly and he'd gotten more cuts than he was ready to acknowledge. Belatedly, the scientist realized that the Other Guy was largely unaffected by the blades.

"You go ahead," he said. "Lead the way." The Other Guy looked at him briefly, but obeyed, stamping through the fields unscathed, crushing the blades beneath his heavy feet, his skin impervious to the sharp edges.

Against all reason, the Big Guy seemed to take pleasure in the responsibility. He swung his arms out as he walked, as if to afford Bruce greater passage. The Other Guy was compliant when Bruce directed him this way or that, but Bruce thought it was mostly a feeling of lost control that urged him to direct the Other Guy at all. He seemed to know where he was going with a single-mindedness that Bruce lacked, and after what seemed like hours, Bruce relinquished control, following the Other Guy in what seemed to be a haphazard pattern.

Bruce tried to engage the Other Guy in conversation. He'd always assumed the beast was his inhibitions released, but the thing that forged their path was sentient. He skirted traps that only became apparent once a soul stepped into them, cages of green glass trapping them. Bruce tried to ignore the screams of the phantoms as they were pierced by sharpened pieces of grass, tried to find some semblance of reason to define their suffering, and failing.

Bruce had never taken stock in Steve's devoutness. If he was completely honest, he'd judged their leader for it. How could a learned man fall into such fallacy? Religion was a device left to the masses, too ignorant of the world around them, too afraid to admit that life was their only shot at greatness. Bruce had never believed in an afterlife, had thought it a childish notion, at best.

With the advent of the Other Guy, Bruce had sought answers in his research. And when that failed him, he'd turned to philosophy. And through it all, he'd never considered that there could be something greater than himself.

But now, as he followed the great green beast, a creature of his own creating, he realized his aversion of religion was due, in part, to the fear of how he would be judged. He was responsible for the deaths of countless innocents that he could not reconcile. He did not want another judging him for them: their deaths weighed on him every single day.

"I don't deserve to leave this place," he pulled on a blade of broken grass, the edges cutting into his skin. Holding the blade in the palm of his bleeding hand, the fractured glass mirrored his appearance, but half his face was missing.

"Don't," The Other Guy said, startling Bruce.

"Don't what?" Bruce prompted, excited that his monster had decided to speak on his own volition.

"Just…." The monster trailed off, looking at Bruce with furrowed brows. "Don't," he said after a struggle. The words were clumsy but no less astounding. Bruce had grown to have some control over himself when he turned, but he'd always assumed his baser side was of lower functioning IQ; a display of his medulla oblongata, absent of any higher thought.

"I didn't know you could talk," Bruce admitted. "You know—until just recently." The blades of green glass shattered underneath his feet, and he was grateful for the armor forced upon him. At the time, he'd thought it ridiculous, but now he knew he would never had survived without it.

"Some," the Other Guy repeated. "Mostly no reason to," he said.

"Fascinating," Bruce said. He'd never thought to research the Other Guy, so consumed was he on stopping his turning from happening at all. Abruptly, he stopped in the field. He had always thought himself a modern Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde, but now he realized he was closer to Dr. Frankenstein.

"Come," the Other Guy urged. "Time lost," he pressed, when Bruce hesitated.

"Can you think? Do you know what you're doing, when you take over?" Bruce was afraid of the answer.

"Some," the Other Guy admitted. "Anger. Hurt."

Bruce hastened to catch up. He'd always though his base impulses were born from born from the most conserved sequences: had never thought the Other Guy might be aware, wasn't capable of it.

"Do you know me?" Bruce tried, but the beast ignored him. He felt like he had only the loosest of grasps over the thing that possessed him when he was angry. If he could focus that rage, he could be a force. He couldn't deny the abilities of the Other Guy, had often wished he had the capabilities to do what he could do.

As they passed over the ragged earth past the fields of glass, they came to a small wall. Instead of stone, it was designed of bone, skulls and femurs aged and near crumbling, plastered along the length of the field. They climbed over it, and the field that lay beyond was a bone yard, errant skeletons, half exposed, strewn across the fallow grounds.

Tattered souls wandered amongst the field, collecting bones. Bruce watched in morbid curiosity as they tried to fit these lost bones into their body to replace parts that had gone missing.

Bruce watched as one soul, mostly skeletonized, crumbled to the ground. It bones scattered and settled into the mud. A few souls tried to fix the new bones into their bodies, snapping bone from the skeleton is a sickening crack. Those that were successful trundled away, their faces fixed in the white grin of their skulls.

"Your dead," the Hulk said.

"_You're," _Bruce corrected automatically. He hadn't remembered dying, but he wasn't surprised.

"No," The Other Guy said.

"My dead? But that doesn't make sense," Bruce argued. "These souls have clearly been dead for many years."

"Not them. Behind."

Bruce was afraid to turn around, but when the curiosity grew too great, he chanced a glance behind him. A spread of souls, the swaths of his dead, were following them. All of them recognizable, all of them faces that Bruce had committed to memory in the shadow of the massive destruction he'd caused.

Fear gripped Bruce, and he started running. The Hulk followed, his great steps loosening bones from their muddy homes. The old souls fell onto the released bones, their skulls clacking together in excitement as they tested these new bones for a perfect fit.

The breath in Bruce's chest began to hurt, and his legs strained from the effort, and still he pushed. When he felt he could run no further, he jogged, and when he was tired of that, he slowed to a walk. Surely, they had escaped them and were safe.

But when he looked behind him, he saw his gaggle of dead had only grown in number.

Abruptly, the hulking green man stopped. Bruce came to rest at his side.

They stood at the edge of the world.

Before him lay an expanse of swirling galaxies and stars, thousands that he could see and millions more that he knew he couldn't.

Just after he'd made the Other Guy, he'd had a dream where he stood on the edge of the universe. In the dream, he had jumped off the cliff of the world and had _flown_. He'd had no ties to the world, could not be held responsible for the deaths he had caused.

Bruce considered jumping now. In the dream, he had found the cure for the Hulk, he'd solved the mystery of cell proliferation and cured cancer; he'd learned all the secrets of the universe, and on waking, they were gone.

A heavy hand came to rest on his shoulder, and Bruce looked up into the muddy brown eyes of the Hulk. It was the first time he had truly looked at his beast. Instead of seeing the naked rage he expected, he saw only sorrow.

"If you jump," The Hulk spoke with great difficulty, focusing on the structure of his sentences. "You—" The Hulk floundered, irritation flashing across his face as he struggled with the words. He made a motion with his massive hands that Bruce understood.

"I will fall," he said.

"Will fall," the Other Guy agreed. "That place," he motioned outward to Bruce's desired lands, "not meant for us."

"If you carry me, we will make it. All the secrets of the universe await me." Desire burned in his chest, and while the mission to find Steve, to find the team, nagged him, it was a distant second in his list of priorities. When he returned, he would be the greatest scientist the world had ever seen. He knew, if only he could cross over, that he would bring back the cures to all of humanity's ailments. Whereas he lived his life in infamy, he would be lauded a hero, and he could finally make up for all those he had inadvertently killed by curing the ills that had plagued humanity for thousands of years.

"No," the Hulk said, his mouth drawn in a thin line. "Icarus."

Bruce felt rage flash in his chest, and he pounded on the Other Guy's massive chest. The Hulk weathered it, and Bruce knew, abstractly, that his blows were no more than a small irritation. "You're keeping me from the thing that can save everyone! I've killed so many."

"Dying not bring them back," the Other Guy said sadly. "I…regret."

Bruce sobbed, his fist falls slowing, until he clasped his hands on the Hulk's chest. "Even if I saved everyone, I will never be able to bring the parents back, the brothers and sisters I killed in rage. _You_ killed."

"_We,_" the Hulk stressed. "We are the same."

"I'm going over the edge," Bruce said with resolve. "I failed at everything else, I will not fail at this."

""If you must go, then…I will carry," his beast offered.

"I don't need you to," the scientist said. "But you can come with me."

"Okay," the Other Guy agreed after a long pause.

And they jumped over the edge.

CHAPTER END

A/N:

Please keep the reviews coming! They're my lifeblood!

Tyr is the god associated with law and heroic glory, and also of the God of war (a designation that Odin shared at some point during the Migration Age.)

Natasha's story is a real folk story based off the tale found here: . ?content=fairytaleview&&fairytaleid=28&fairytale=quos&length=S and the Wikipedia article on the Queen of Spades.


	6. Win One for the Reaper

Win One for the Reaper

_And the souls were left resting_

_As they gathered up the crowd_

_No one was left guessing_

_No one was proud_

_And we're all in this together_

_And I won't get out lost_

_And they'll call you up and tell you_

_That I once survived_

We're All in This Together—Gabby Young and Other Animals

The only route available to them was a rocky path that skirted the cliff. It was hardly large enough for Clint and Tony to traverse side by side, but they managed.

The path—if it could be called that—was littered with rocks from the slide that all seemed intent on further injuring his ankle.

Clint was sure something was broken, but he didn't want to worry Tony with the knowledge. There was nothing to be done for it, so he'd loosened the ties on his boot and would deal with it when they got back. The pain in his foot paled in comparison to that of his face. Any facial expressions, no matter how small, were excruciating.

More frightening were the pieces he could no longer feel—dead zones on his face that Clint knew indicated severe nerve damage.

The barren rocks around them began to be populated by wailing ghosts, whose skin was charred or broiled red from the heat of the fire, revealing muscle and sinew. Their eyelids had been burned away and they stared at the group with unblinking eyes.

Clint had seen heads without skin before, but it never ceased to amaze him how large the eyes looked without lids, how bulbous and protruding.

As they scrambled over the wayward rocks that lay before them, the boulders around them became further populated with souls of the dead, their sorrow pouring into a stream of tears that ran amongst the rocks.

The water was an oily black, and grasping hands surfaced occasionally, as if to capture the episodes of pain and sorrow for their own.

Clint ignored them as best as he could, but when a hand reached out and grabbed his wounded ankle, he stumbled and fell. He felt a firm grip on his arm, and looked up to see Tony helping him.

"I've got you, Clint." Tony said quietly, smiling tightly.

As they continued, Clint noticed that the crying souls stared at Tony intensely. Many were obviously the newly dead—they'd hardly begun to decay at all, and their faces were still evidence of the people they had been. They reached for the Ironman as if he were their savior.

"Who are all these people?" Clint asked carefully around his wounded face.

"These," Tony's voice was heavy. He paused to swallow thickly, reluctantly. "Are the people I killed."

"_You _killed?"

"I mean—I'm not like, a secret serial killer," Tony's laugh was brittle and it broke and died as he continued, "The weapons I built…" Tony trailed off before starting again, "I was... brash when I was young. My father had always built things to further humanity, and when he died and Obidiah told me he wanted to focus on weapons, I agreed. Howard built weapons for the Second World War, so in a way, I was continuing his legacy. I didn't care how Obidiah focused our efforts as long as he kept me living in style from our profits."

The ranger glanced at his companion.

They didn't discuss their pasts often—an unspoken agreement amongst the Avengers. If anything, Clint had judged Steve for trying to recover his past, but as he looked at the dead on the rocks, his own dead scattered amongst Tony's, he realized that ignoring their pasts had brought them no solace, bought them no refuge from the things they'd done.

"You don't make weapons anymore. What happened?" Clint vaguely recalled the big media to-do surrounding the declaration that Stark industry would no longer be involved in mass-produced weaponry.

At the time, he'd had no association with the CEO of Stark Enterprises, and had ignored most of the ensuing media circus.

Tony knocked an armored fist against the blowing glue orb in his chest.

"A man died."

The tears born of desolation from Tony's dead formed a stream that became a swamp that transected their path. They stood on the shores of the bog; boulders and barren trees bleached white stood vigil over the silent waters.

The dead and other nameless creatures peered at them from the depths of the mire. To their right lay the cliff, and on their left, the remnants of the burned forest trailed into the waters.

"We have to go through that?"

"Looks like it." Tony grimaced.

Clint stared at the things in the water, and they stared back. He felt like a child again, afraid there were monsters in the closet and under his bed, except this time the monsters were real and simply switching on the lights wouldn't save him. He had never wanted something as badly as he wanted to not have to go into that swamp.

Clint stepped forward. The silt beneath his feet gave, and he winced as it grabbed his ankle in just the wrong way. Tony splashed in beside him.

"Think there's high ground?" He asked.

"We've never been so lucky," Hawkeye said morosely.

"You know, Pepper's told me that we're born with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience," Tony grunted as his foot came loose with a great sucking sound. "The trick is to fill the bag of experience before the bag of luck runs out."

"Seems like our bags of luck just ran out."

Tony chuckled, but there was no humor in it.

"Seems like."

The creatures around them were keening at them in a high-pitched wail.

Clint ignored them and the flashes of light that erupted across the swampland. When he and Nat had been on their mission in Belarus, they'd spent a lot of time in the famed swamps there, and had seen their fair share of swamp gas.

To pass the time, Natasha had told him stories of how foxfire had once lured travelers to their doom. She knew as well as he did that the lights were little more than the oxidation of phosphine and methane and the resulting photon emissions, but it had passed the time, and Clint liked to hear her fairy tales. For a woman as stoic as she, she could weave a story like no other, and Clint could listen to her talk for hours.

In a different life, he thought she would have been a good teacher and an even better mother.

A wisp of fire darted out of the corner of his eye, and when Clint tried to look at it, it wasn't there. Clint wasn't sure what the ghost lights were made of in this hellish place, but he knew they weren't the harmless byproducts of gas.

"Don't follow them," Clint told Tony. At the rate that Stark's head was swiveling from side to side, Clint knew they drew his attention, too.

"The lights? Maybe they'll lead us out of here."

"No," Barton returned firmly. "They won't. Nothing good lies that way."

"How can you be so sure? We're in a swamp, and any way we go is just as good as another."

"Hey—do you hear that?" A quiet wail could be heard above the moaning of the souls of the bog. It pulled on the tendrils of Hakweye's soul, and he wanted to find the source of the cry. It was so sorrowful, and suddenly Clint wanted nothing more than to find the woman (and it was a woman, he was sure of it) that made that cry and pull her to his chest and soothe her pain.

"The crying woman? Sounds like a banshee."

"A what?"

"You've never heard of a banshee? Like from folk lore?"

"I'm sorry if I don't spend my pastime reading up on frivolous stuff."

"No, you spend your time watching _Burn Notice _and sparring with Natasha. But I'm going to get on that in a second—seriously, banshees?"

"Tony, I've never heard of the damn things. Are they something you read in one of you Norse power hour sessions with Bruce?"

"No, they're not really in Norse mythology at all. They're mostly Irish."

"Stark isn't an Irish name."

"My mom was a Carbonell, but her mom was a McLaughlin, and straight from Ireland. When I was a kid, mom used to regale me with all sorts of crazy Irish stories."

"You never talk about your mom."

"I know," Tony said stonily."She was a great person. She tried to protect me from Howard's spiral into alcoholism."

_Like father, like son_, Clint thought.

"What about banshees, though?"

"They're fairy women who wail when someone is about to die."

"Well, that's not foreboding at all."

"Ignore her," Stark said, "It's for the best."

"Do you think she's heralding our death?" Clint wondered.

"I don't know. I don't think that's how they work though. We can both hear her, right? So it can't be either of us."

Clint found himself wondering about Nat and hoped she was safe. He didn't know anything about banshees or their rules of engagement, but as her quiet keening accompanied their slog across the swamp, he hoped she was fairing better than they were.

Time passed, during which Clint could remember nothing but pain, each step excruciating in its movement despite Tony's aid—they found a man standing in their path. He was largely unaffected by the cloying waters of the black swamp, and unlike most of Hel's dead, this man was grinning and snappishly dressed, no signs of decay evident. He glimmered with an otherworldly glow and wore a thinly trimmed mustache and slicked black hair. Clint thought he looked oddly familiar. Tony groaned next to him.

"Who is that?"

"That," Tony stopped, forcing Clint to stop as well. "Is my father."

0o0o0o0o

Natasha noticed a discernable decline in the plateau. She felt it first in her knee, as it complained loudest at the shift in elevation.

Despite the spike of pain, she couldn't help but feel elated. If they were descending, they were likely closing in on Loki, or at the very least, the floor of the cliff.

"We appear to be going down," Thor observed, some of his usual jocularity returning.

"Yeah," Natasha said in relief. "How's that beam looking?"

"It's stronger than before," Thor allowed, "but in this place, I do not know if we should trust it."

"I'll take it," Natasha said as hope grew in her chest. She wondered what lay at the end of their descent, hoped that somehow it would be the mouth of the cave that held Loki.

If she were very, very lucky, Clint would be there already. She couldn't tell Thor how much she worried for their companions.

In the Tower, she would be the last to admit how much the companionship of the Avengers meant to her.

In the intervening year since she'd moved in, her friendship with Clint had only grown—before, they'd worked together on missions and her trust in him had grown incrementally, but days spent sparring and lounging around Tony's obnoxiously large TV had earned her love in laughter and shared downtime.

Natasha had never imagined that she would be the sort of woman to have a healthy relationship, and she'd avoided the entreaties of men almost religiously.

Natasha had seen the worst that mankind had to offer, and she thought she'd wiped her hands clean of it. Somehow, Clint had snuck in past her battle lines, and she hadn't realized it until he was no longer by her side. This mission was as much about saving Steve and Loki as it was finding Clint.

"I am worried about Tony." Thor spoke apropos of nothing, breaking the silence and her thoughts.

"Tony?" Nat echoed. She and Clint had discussed Stark's state of mind on several occasions. They both recognized battle fatigue, and he hit all the major wickets.

They had hoped to bring the matter to the attention of Steve—as their leader, he was in a better position to address the issue than either of them—but they'd never had opportunity, and they'd both worried about what a trip to Niflheim would do to his psyche.

Tony already drank too much, but now he did it to drown his mind, and although he did his best to hide his panic attacks, they were painfully obvious.

"I may be interpreting human emotions wrongly, but ever since he returned from space, he has seemed not quite himself."

"I didn't know you paid attention to us."

"You are my companions and my friends," Thor looked affronted. "How could I not?"

"My mistake," the Black Widow said quickly. "I just thought—"

"You thought I was a buffoon. No, do not deny it. I realized how I must have looked to Midgardians after I saw you at the feast."

"Thor—" Natasha began apologetically. "Wait, how did we act at the feast?"

"Clint Barton fell asleep in his meal before the conclusion of the feast. If an Aesir had done similarly, he would never hear the end of it. Such a thing is not done. So, you need not apologize. I understand."

"You fit in with us because _we_ don't fit in with the mass of humanity."

"And yet, you still thought I did not think of you. Did you assume I went on this journey only to recover my brother? I would come for Captain Steve regardless, as he does not belong here, and I could not suffer him to exist here one more day. But I could not go on this adventure alone, and I would not go without those I trust."

"I know, Thor. I get that. I'm sorry you thought otherwise."

Thor's face eased, a ghost of a smile gracing his features as he looked down at her.

"Do not dwell on the matter, for we are friends, and misunderstandings are to be overlooked. It's getting steeper, isn't it?"

"Now that you mention it, I think you're right."

Natasha knew she had to be careful with her footing—any wrong step could spell disaster if she wrenched her knee further. She looked down to piece her way across the rapidly descending canyon side.

Pebbles loosened and tumbled by her feet, landing in dust around bigger rocks. She noticed in alarm that the larger rocks were shaking loose from their places as well.

"Is the ground moving?"

Thor's answer was lost in the clatter as rush of rocks tumbled past them, and their steep but manageable path became a steep slide.

Natasha felt Thor's hand tighten painfully around her bicep before the moving rocks ripped him away. Her surroundings were absolute chaos, and she tried to apply everything she knew about falling to keeping her head protected.

Bad luck trumped training every time, and she cursed her situation just as her head collided with the corner of a rock and consciousness faded from her like somebody had pulled the end curtain of a play.

She woke incrementally, the pain in her head refusing her further respite from unconsciousness.

After the pain, the first thing she became aware of was the stickiness on the side of her face and the blurred vision. She tried to wipe the blood away from her face, but her arm was only marginally responsive—like she'd slept on it too long. Her hand came down on her face clumsily. Quickly after she'd restored movement, the pins and needles became almost excruciating and she stopped moving until the blood flow was returned.

They'd been _stupid_. Of _course_ a cliff created from nothing could go back to nothing at a moment's notice.

She attempted to wipe the blood away from her eye, but it only served to blur her vision further. She closed her eye in an attempt to stop the stinging and found herself only marginally successful.

Sighing in frustrating, she did a mental check of her body before she tried to move it. Her knee was complaining loudly, and she'd hoped she hadn't done too much damage to it, but besides a few bumps and bruises, she seemed relatively unscathed. She struggled to a sitting position, her body complaining from the motion.

"Thor?" She tried, but the settling dust caught in her throat and it came out as a cough. She dissolved into a coughing fit, and for a moment she thought she'd never breathe easy again.

"Thor!" She tried again, when the fit had subsided, scanning the area around her. Everything was blurry and tinted reddish-brown from the dust of the rock fall.

Her surroundings were completely foreign—the cliff was gone, replaced by a plain populated by boulders and wandering souls, crying out piteously for their friends, who walked in the rocky field, dropping to boney knees to dig out a companion.

"Thor!" She cried again as she pushed herself to a standing position. Her knee gave out, and she had to brace herself on a nearby rock to keep from falling. She worked on simply breathing for a minute and conquering the pain that came in waves before she returned to her search.

Stumbling across the rocky field, she tripped over a particularly large boulder.

Looking down, she noticed that it glinted under the red light. Dropping to her knees gingerly, she pulled the rocks away savagely until she had uncovered Thor's quiescent form.

A gash on his brow had coated his face in red, and she wished he hadn't been so quick to toss his cloak away. She'd had the foresight to pack a small first aid pack, and she reached for it now, tearing free a small antiseptic wipe to clean the wound.

Thor stirred as the pad came in contact with the open wound. He blinked at her blearily, and she noticed in alarm that one pupil was blown out.

"My head," he groaned.

"You've got a concussion," she said. "You took quite a hit."

He moved to get up, but she pushed down on his chest.

"Before you move, I need you to do an assessment. How do you feel? Does anything feel broken? Can you feel your feet?"

"I can't move them," he said. Natasha felt her heart plummet, and she looked down at his legs and found them wedged in the fallen rocks.

"You can't move them, but can you feel them?"

"Yes, of course," Thor frowned. He pushed against her hand as he struggled to sit up.

The sudden movement turned his face green, and just as Natasha thought he might be sick, he turned to the side and vomited bile. When he was done, he looked at Natasha in mortification.

"That was rude."

"It's all right, Thor. You got up too fast. Just take it easy, let me see if I can get your legs free. Hey—stop moving them!" Natasha snapped as the demigod started struggling. He stilled.

Natasha was able to push away some of the lighter rocks. It seemed as though Thor's armor had protected him anything too bad, and Nat was amazed that the metal wasn't even dented. She looked into the hole where Thor's trapped, and found that they largely appeared uninjured.

She couldn't move the rock that trapped him.

"I need a lever or something, some sort of stick. I can't get this off you by myself."

"Something stirs in that cave," her companion stated grimly, ignoring her attempts at freeing him. Natasha followed his gaze with a sense of growing trepidation.

She hadn't even noticed the cave before he'd mentioned, but as she watched, a stumbling, badly charred skeleton flanked by a team of glowing souls, whose faces were obscured, headed into the cave.

What was truly unnerving was that she had yet to seen any in Niflheim appear so unaffected by the horrors that surrounded them, and she knew she was witnessing something strange, something that didn't belong in the dreary lands of this dead world.

One of the golden spirits chanced a look at her, and for a moment, Natasha thought she recognized him. The memory dug at her, and she settled on her haunches as she tried to remember the face.

"Thor I _know_ them," she realized after a moment.

Still watching the entourage of souls, he asked, "From where?"

"I think-I think that's Steve's team."

"But then that skeleton—"

"Is Steve," Natasha finished, her heart beating faster at the thought.

Before Natasha could dwell on what that meant, she heard her name being called. She scanned the ragged plains, searching for the source of the voice. Just when she thought it was something she'd only heard in her head, she could see a trio in the distance. Her heart caught in her chest.

"Tony! Bruce! Clint!" She yelled, waving her arms.

"Is it the team?" Thor wrenched to check, his neck craning.

"We'll get you out of there before too long," she promised, tracking the team's progression of the plains.

It took a moment to realize that the three figures were all human shaped and wondered where The Hulk had gone. She could definitively see Tony in his Ironman suit, and Clint—a form she had memorized—but the other one, a man surrounded in an ethereal glow not unlike Steve's team had been, was slighter in build than Bruce.

"Natasha? What's wrong?"

"Bruce isn't with them."

After an age, they were close enough that Natasha could hear their footfalls against the earth. She quelled the desire to run to them. Now that they were closer, she could get a good look at the man that walked with them.

She recognized him instantly.

"Howard Stark," she breathed.

"Who?" Thor tried to push himself up.

"Stop-just wait a little longer," she commanded. Thor scowled, but fell back to the earth.

"Natasha." Clint smiled when they were less than twenty meters away. He hurried past Howard to wrap Natasha in an encompassing hug. Natasha stiffened before she allowed herself relax, and for the first time since coming to Niflheim, she thought there might be hope for them.

She allowed the hug to continue for several seconds before pulling herself away from Clint, and he let her go to assay the faces of Iron Man and his father.

"You're Howard Stark," she said. His smirk widened into a smile.

"I am afraid my reputation has proceeded me. You must be the infamous Natasha Romanov my son has told me all about?"

"The same," she grinned.

"Pleased to meet you." He proffered his hand. Natasha was expecting him to kiss her own, in the way that elderly men seemed to think was charming usually did, but he shook it firmly. "Tony says you're quite a force to be reckoned with."

Natasha looked over Howard's shoulder, eyebrows raised. From what she had gathered, there was no love lost between Tony and his father. He gave her an eye roll, shrugging dramatically.

"Where's Bruce?" the ranger asked.

"We were hoping he was with you," Natasha said.

"We haven't seen him since the forest fire."

"What about Loki? Steve?"

Natasha and Thor shared a look. Thor palmed the amulet in his hand, and he looked back up at the mouth of the cave. Clint and Tony followed his gaze.

"Is he in there?" Iron Man asked.

"Yes, and Steve, too, we think," Natasha admitted.

"You think?"

"If it was him. It was hard to say."

"_If_ it was him? He's hard to recognize in his patriotic onesie."

Thor and Natasha looked at one another again. Thor palmed the amulet in his hand, and he looked back up at the mouth of the cave. Clint and Tony followed his gaze.

They couldn't be sure that they lumbering skeleton they'd seen was Steve, but Natasha had seen the faces of the Howling Commandos sketched out enough to know what they looked like, and they had no other reason to be here than to follow their leader one last time.

"Hey, what's with all this secret squirrel stuff?" Tony griped.

"If it was Steve, he wasn't looking good."

"What do you mean, '_not looking good'_?" Tony parroted, narrowing his eyes at Natasha.

"There was a skeleton. There was nothing recognizable left but-"

"Oh," Tony said. "Oh. _Shit._"

Tony looked at the mouth of the cave that Natasha and Thor swore Steve had entered. Thor stressed that his mother's spell's light headed straight into the cavern.

The billionaire chanced a glance at his father. Howard's eyes slid to meet his own, and he frowned. "We've gone this far, we won't give up now, son."

There had been a time that his words would have chafed him, and he would've snapped back with a, "I wasn't going to give up", but after a life time of following Howard across the shifting lands of Niflheim, Tony realized that it hadn't been disappointment in Tony that had made Howard act the way he had—it was that he had never forgiven himself for losing Steve. If he couldn't do right by Steve, how could he do right by his son?

Tony wasn't sure if it was the distance of years, or the act of living that had given him perspective on his father, or simply the fact that he'd finally witnessed Captain America for himself. He was everything his father had ever said he was, when he talked about him at all.

"Let's get Thor out," he said instead. Howard nodded.

Tony knelt beside Thor, eyeing the rocks that trapped him. He'd almost exhausted his reserves, and he was afraid by what waited for them in the cave, unsure that if he spent what little energy he had left he could help save Steve and Loki.

"We're all in this together," Howard knelt down next to his son. Natasha and Clint took up place on the other side of the rock.

"On the count of three." The Black Widow said. "One, two—"

On three they heaved, and for a moment, it seemed like the rock wouldn't budge, but then Tony could feel it give beneath them, and he threw his shoulder into it. When its potential energy had become kinetic, it finally shifted and Natasha and Clint dodged out of the way as it rolled over the rock it was propped against.

Thor pulled his legs free with a sigh of relief and instantly began massaging them, restoring blood flow.

"Are you okay?" Nat asked, her hand on Thor's shoulder. Belatedly, Tony noticed the collected bile and his mismatched pupils.

"What happened?" He asked.

"There was a cliff," Nat said, "And then there wasn't."

"I'm fine," Thor promised as he staggered to a standing position, looking decidedly uncertain on two feet.

Natasha was at his side at once, catching him before he fell.

Clint took up position under Thor's other shoulder, and Tony noted the look they shared. If nothing else good came from this, he hoped that they would at least stop dancing around the obvious affection they had for one another.

"Bruce—" Natasha began.

"I don't know where your companion is," Howard interrupted, "But if Captain America was already a skeleton as you say, he doesn't have much time left."

The assassin's face grew troubled, and she shared another looked with Clint. When she looked back at Tony, she nodded.

"We go for Steve, and then we find Bruce."

Tony glanced at the cavern opening. It was unassuming amongst the pile of rocks, and if not for Natasha and Thor and his father, he would have missed it altogether.

If not for his father, they would not have made it this far at all.

"For my brother!" Thor declared, lunging forward. Clint was there to catch him before he fell, the Aesir's face growing sheepish. "It seems my feet fell asleep," he admitted, stumbling along with Clint's support until he was able to walk normally.

Thor moved drunkenly, and Tony thought his head wound must be worse than he was letting on.

They closed in on the cave, pausing before its entrance.

"You sure this is it?" Natasha asked. Thor looked at his amulet, the path indiscernible to any but him.

"I'm sure," he said.

They crossed the threshold.

CHAPTER END


	7. You'll Never Get a Wish from a Bone

You'll Never Get a Wish from a Bone

_A rat always knows when he's in with weasels_

_Here you lose a little every day_

_I remember when a million was a million_

_They all have ways to make you pay_

-Little Drop of Poison-Tom Waits

Upon his death, Loki had been whisked away into the bowels of Niflheim to meet his destiny. Slimy lengths of intestine strapped him to a slab of rock. Eerie green light, from an indefinable source, cast the cave he was meant to spend the rest of his life in a sickly hue.

The ceiling and floor of the cave were rife with the jutting stones of natural cave formations. Decapitated heads—Loki's dead, he had known—were stuck on the sharpened pikes of the stalagmites. They moaned incessantly, and Loki had realized that it was a sound he was going to have to grow accustomed.

Curled around the ancient stalactites, was the one he had spent a lifetime trying to prepare himself for while all the time doing everything within his power to prevent meeting his fate.

Loki could count the number of times he had experienced true fear on one hand.

One of the more indiscriminate times had been the realization that Steve had seeped into his soul despite all attempts to keep him strictly out.

But when the reptilian face from his nightmares peered down at him with fangs that dripped poison, Loki realized with great clarity that it had been a petty fear that paled in comparison to his current predicament.

When he'd first arrived at this place of destiny, he'd found the Serpent loquacious and eager to share her distinct opinion.

"Did you really think you could escape me?" her voice had been composed largely of guttural clicks and hisses, and vaguely female. Her reptilian eyes had glittered yellow in the otherworldly glow emanating from the cavern walls, and her face, with a tongue much too long and flickering out at random, curled into a primordial sneer.

"Even when the Fates erased their destinies and everything started to move in flux, I knew it wouldn't matter. You would come here."

"What do you mean, 'erased'?" He'd asked.

The Serpent had sniffed elegantly, head moving elegantly so one of her enormous eyes was level with his. She had regarded him silently for a moment before sighing, a shuddering billow of air into the cave at large. Instead of answering him, she told a story.

"'A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Tehran, which he could reach that same evening.

"The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself met Death, and questioned him, 'Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?' the master asked, to which Death replied, 'I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Tehran'.'"

Loki mulled over her words, grateful for the break in torture, and to have something to think about beside his situation. "Am I Death?" He'd asked.

"You're the servant."

"I am no one's servant," Loki had seethed.

"Your tryst with the human threw the Fates in an upset. Your path was no longer written—you had free reign over your destiny, but you met it all the same."

"That's impossible," Loki had argued. It had to be—otherwise everything he'd done—abandoning Steve to die—had been for no reason at all, and that was worse than if he'd done it deliberately.

The mocking laugh he had been given in return was all the confirmation Loki needed, and he'd known then he'd made a terrible mistake, and despair had washed over him.

There, in the Serpent's dungeon, Loki had realized the despair he had felt was not for himself, but for the hapless Steve Rogers, doomed to the realm of the unfortunate dead because of him.

If he knew anything about Steve Rogers, it was that the man was foolishly stubborn. He knew with a certain precision that the captain wouldn't abandon his search for Loki. Just as he knew this, he also knew, perhaps intuitively, that Hel would win, and that Steve would forget who he was and be cursed to wander Hel's realm until the day she called her army forth against Odin.

When the Serpent's acid had dripped into his eyes, he felt it burned and eat at the mucous membrane, sinking towards his brain. The pain waned in comparison to the full comprehension of his actions.

His vision had grown skewed and lopsided.

"I was never your enemy!" He'd raged.

"I am only your judgment," she'd returned mildly. "It was not _my_ actions that brought you here. I am fulfilling my piece, just as you are fulfilling yours. I've waited for you a long time, Loki. Welcome home."

Since then, she'd taken to dropping poison on him laconically. Each drop hissed as it hit skin or armor, and Loki felt the acid burrow into his skin. Through some act of perversion, she'd left one eye unscathed so Loki could see the decapitated dead, their rotting skulls stuck onto the jutting stalagmites

She'd also left enough slack in the intestines so that, were he obliged, he could see his body sizzle under the slow drops of acid.

Loki had never wronged her, and he wondered where his hatred stemmed from, but then... he hadn't hated any of his victims—they were collateral damage, and there had never been any malicious intent.

Now, as he gazed at the screaming heads, the mass of his victims throughout the ages, he wondered if that was worse. He'd orphaned children, broken families and torn loved friends away, and all that pain due to negligence on his part: he simply hadn't cared.

Loki noticed a lurching skeleton enter the cave. The thing was badly burnt: normally white bone had blackened and charred and all its flesh melted away. Loki figured it wouldn't be able to remain upright at all were it not for the entourage of souls that propped the skeleton up, urging it forward.

Their path was deliberate, and Loki realized they were heading for him.

Wondering what new torture was in store; he was surprised when the serpent turned away from him, her venom now falling onto the crowns of his dead. The incessant moaning became screams of pain and terror as acid burned into their skulls.

"Who are you?" She hissed angrily.

Without flesh and muscle to define its features, without the ability to speak or cry or smile, a skeleton was unrecognizable—just a mass of calcium and phosphorus—and although Loki felt like he should know the one that plodded towards him, he did not.

The skeleton ignored the serpent and continued its slow stumble, the jaw hanging open in a macabre grin. He wondered if this was yet another man he had crossed and was coming for retribution.

Loki glanced at the souls that flanked this stumbling skeleton, several of whom were holding bones that had fallen away; so decrepit was the state of this creature.

Loki was ready to turn away, ready to ignore this sad platoon of lost souls when he realized he recognized one of the men flanking the skeleton.

After months of staring at Steve's drawings, he'd memorized every line, every dimple and freckle and flaw of the people that populated his past. When Steve was especially maudlin, he sketched his best friend, and it was that face that stared back at him now.

"It can't be—" Loki stared harder, and the ghost managed a cocky smile. "You," he realized.

Loki looked again at each of the souls that followed the skeleton. They glimmered golden, soft and untouched by the horrors of this world, and he realized he knew these men. He'd seen them often enough, on Steve's walls and in his notebook. The one with the obnoxiously outdated hat was Dum Dum, the guy with the beret was Falsworth and the Asian man peering back at him was none other than Jim Morita, standing side by side with Gabe. Loki knew that only left Jacques Dernier, and while he'd always thought that the mustache Steve sketched onto the man was an exaggeration, he now realized it paled in comparison to the actual facial hair the man sported.

Loki stretched against his slimy bonds just far enough to prop himself up with one arm.

With growing trepidation, he looked again at the skeleton. It grinned back at him and clacked its teeth together excitedly.

Belatedly, he noticed a faint beam of blue light terminating where its heart would be. It formed a beating blue orb that contained the essence of this creature that had once been a man.

"Steve," Loki gasped. He sank back to the rock as hopelessness roiled over him. Steve had come for him, but it was too late. Hel had consumed him, and he would never return.

Still clattering away it—_he_—lurched towards Loki, scapula shifting so he could raise the tattered remains of his arm to reach for Loki.

The Serpent struck unexpectedly, head and jaws appearing out of nowhere.

Steve's skeletal forearm came up to block the strike, and sharp teeth clamped around the radius and ulna, tearing them off with a swift move of her serpentine body and swallowing them whole. The bones of his hand clattered to the floor, scattering into a million tiny pieces.

Steve's team howled, and fell upon the beast.

Arm swallowed, the Serpent launched again, her jaw clasping around Steve's shoulder. She worried at it, trying to tear it away. Dum Dum beat at her, and although his blows appeared to do no damage, he succeeded in distracting her. She snapped out at the annoyance, fangs sliding through air, and Dum Dum wavered.

"What's this?" She howled, thwarted.

"Free me!" Loki shouted out to the souls.

The souls were engaged in beating off the Serpent, and they ignored him.

Loki raged against his bonds, catching the attention of one who had not yet engaged the Serpent. He had the critical eye of a decision maker, and he had clearly assessed that the current plan of attack wasn't working but hadn't yet figured out an alternative strategy. Loki stared at the man. He was older than the rest, and twin silver eagles decorated his shoulders.

"Colonel Phillips!" Loki shouted. "I can save him!"

Whatever hesitation the soul had was broken by his name being called. Colonel Phillips skirted the Serpent and the wailing heads, coming abreast of Loki's position.

"You must be Loki," he said gruffly. "Rogers told us all about you."

"Set me free, and I can save him."

"We were ready to take him home, but he refused. Said he'd never left a brother behind in battle, and wouldn't start now. It's my understanding that you're the reason he's here in the first place."

The Colonel crossed his arms and frowned at Loki, his blue eyes piercing. Loki found this cross Midgardian soul intimidated him in a way he had never been of his father.

Loki had never admitted to any fallacy of his own, but as he stared up at Steve's commanding officer, the lie he had prepared died on his lips.

"I did not kill him, but I let him be killed," And for all of Loki's collateral damage, this one bothered him the most. Colonel Phillips remained stoic, and Loki realized there weren't enough words that could fix what he'd done. "The bond forged between us caused him to be here, but if you free me, I can fix it."

Colonel Phillips frowned.

"You're a liar, son. The only person you're concerned about is you."

Behind them, Morita howled in Japanese as he pushed the Serpent away.

Steve's scapula had been wrenched free, and with it, his collarbone. The beating blue orb seemed fainter, and Loki knew that if only he could _get_ to Steve, he could save him.

"Dammit, man! Free me!" he howled, scrabbling desperately against his restraints.

"Peggy was waiting for him with us, but she couldn't come because of the deal he forged for you. Convince me why I should do anything for you."

"Because I'm the only one who can defeat that wretched Serpent!" Loki shrieked, his anger building. This infuriating _man_ was keeping him from saving Steve.

"That may be true, son," the Colonel patted Loki's cheek, and Loki's rage spiked. "But it might be a frying pan and fire situation and frankly, I'm not sure which one you are."

"He's _dying_," Loki pulled against his restraints. To his surprise, he felt them give a little, and he pulled harder. The bonds resisted him, and he tore at them in anger, his fury building when they refused to relinquish their hold.

"Some guts are stopping you," Colonel Phillips jeered, "Clearly, your heart isn't in it. I don't put my stock in quitters. If you knew Steve, you'd know that."

"You are _insufferable_," Loki hissed as he raged against the ties that bound him.

With a great, wrenching pull, Loki broke free. Entrails and blood splattered against the walls and floor as he broke the tension. He swung his feet around so they hung over the table. The Serpent may have obstructed his vision, but his legs were largely intact.

"Shit, even a blind hog gets lucky occasionally," Colonel Phillips observed dryly.

"You are infuriating," Loki shoved the Colonel out of his way. His knees gave and he sank against the stone platform. Colonel Phillips watched coolly as Loki forced himself to stand.

"You got a plan? Ain't nobody been successful when there's no plan."

"For all your bravado, you have no effect on her," Loki spat. "I've been thinking of ways to kill this bitch my entire life."

"So, stop talking about it and do it."

Casting one last scathing glare at the Colonel, he turned away, summoning the familiar words. His magic was weak, so he pulled on the only energy that was available—the fading bond that linked him to Steve. He knew he was pulling on the last available reserves Steve had, saw the blue bond between them flicker and fade, and Steve's skeleton crashed to the floor brokenly, his bones scattering without the bond or his friends to hold him together.

The Serpent recoiled. A rib was hanging from her teeth, and Loki wished she'd choke on it.

"Playing at grandeur, Loki?" She hissed, turning her attention once more on Loki. When she struck, Loki was ready. He grabbed her snout with a firm hand. Green magic tinged in blue shot out from his arm and encompassed his nemesis.

She screamed, a high keening that pierced Loki's ears, but he held on tight while she thrashed.

His magic dissolved her in the way she'd done to him, and once the spell was complete, she was nothing but sinew and bone, but still she fought him.

Loki noticed in the periphery as Steve's rib hit the deck when there was no longer flesh to hold it, and Dum Dum made a desperate grab for it.

Loki ignored them, closing his hand around the Serpent's great skull. He spoke words that would lend him strength, knew that he had to be careful. If he went too far, Steve would be lost forever.

The Serpent fought back, her great skeletal body writhing back and forth, trying to wrap him in a death squeeze. Using the last of his reserves, Loki ripped her head free from her body and threw it to the floor. Her body began to rain down on the stone floor, and the heads slid down the stalagmites, their teeth chomping on pieces of body that fell around them.

Her head, still cognizant, snapped at him, the motion moving her across the floor.

Loki stomped it, feeling the skull shatter rewardingly under his heel.

Colonel Phillips slapped a meaty hand on his back, causing Loki to stagger forward. He rounded on the Colonel, sharp words ready.

Colonel Phillips' mouth quirked at him in an almost-smile.

"Well, I'll be. Maybe you've got the grit after all."

"I have never met someone—"

"—as infuriating as me. Got it, boy. You might want to start collecting up our Captain. Your heroic act cost him."

Loki's eyes slid away from the gruff face of the Colonel to where the Howling Commandos were crawling around on the floor, trying to piece out Steve's fallen skeleton from that of the serpent's.

Bones were bones, and none of Steve's teams were experts, but Loki could detect a faint flickering of blue that indicated which bones belonged to him and which did not.

Loki moved past the Colonel, knowing he was the only one that could identify Steve.

"Dum Dum," the words were funny on his mouth. Loki had never spoken Steve's teammates names aloud, almost as if they'd been a forbidden part of Steve's past. The soul eyed him distrustfully, and Loki ignored it. "You've only got a collection of the serpent's ribs. But that one, just by your knees, is Steve's."

Dum Dum frowned.

"That one?" he nodded with his head.

"Yes."

Dum Dum dropped the bones in his arms and reached for the glowing bone. He held it carefully, as if it were a thing easily broken.

"What do I do with it?"

"Put it over there, we'll make a pile," Loki coached. "If we can collect them, my mother can put him back together."

"He's only bones, how can she do that?" Jacques was on his hands and knees, collecting the multiple bones of Steve's hands. He sifted through the remnants, piecing out those he thought belonged.

"This is his soul. This realm has torn him apart, but if we bring it all back to his body, we might be able to make him whole again. It's very esoteric magic, but if anyone can do it, it's my mother."

"Can you help? Bring him back, I mean?" Morita added one of Steve's femurs to the growing pile. The bones were wholly uninteresting, but they were everything that was left of Steve, and so they meant more to Loki than all the riches of Asgard.

"I am connected to him, and if he cannot return, then I am bound to his fate. We will be doomed to wander the place in-between worlds—neither living nor dead. We will be apart from all the ills of all the worlds—cursed to wander forever."

"Then," Falsworth said slowly, rotating an ulna in his hands thoughtfully, "shouldn't we let him die? He'll come home to us. He can know peace."

"It's a better fate than an eternity of being lost," Morita mused. "We can take a sure thing. Steve could be back with Peggy and with his parents. I get the feeling he isn't that happy, anyway."

"Did he say that?" Loki asked, more sharply than he intended.

"Not in so many words," Dum Dum admitted, "But he may as well have."

"Well then, don't presume to speak for him."

Once the entirety of Steve's skeleton had been collected in a pile, Loki approached Bucky.

The spirit clutched Steve's skull to his chest protectively, eyeing Loki distrustfully.

In any other situation, Loki would have demanded the ghost release his prize through force, but this time, Loki simply held out his hands and waited.

Bucky stared at Loki evenly. "If it were up to me, I'd take him with us, but he came back for you, and that counts for something." After a beat he sighed and said, "I miss him so much."

"So do I," Loki said, and it may have been the most honest thing he'd ever admitted to another soul.

Bucky shifted his weight before tentatively holding out the skull. He tightened his hands around the bone just as Loki went to take it.

"Don't let this be the end of him."

"I wont," Loki promised.

Steve's best friend loosed his grip, surrendering the skull to Loki.

"I'll hold you to that."

While Loki had made and broken a million promises in the course of his life, this was the first one he was resolute in keeping. He cradled Steve's skull to his chest, could feel the waning energy of everything that was Steve leaking away. His skull chattered at Loki, but with so much of their magic gone, Loki couldn't guess as to what he was saying.

Loki wondered if he had ever understood the things Steve was trying to tell him. He'd always assumed he was better because of who he was, and he was suddenly afraid he'd missed all the wisdom Steve had tried to share.

"He says he's glad to see you," Dum Dum offered, coming to rest beside Loki, his hands jammed in his pockets.

Loki clutched Steve's skull to his chest, looking across the faces of the Howling Commandos. They shone bright, still unaffected by the horrors of Niflheim, and clustered around Steve's head.

Loki couldn't help but notice that no one had come for him no entourage of souls so devoted to him that they had crossed realms to guarantee his return.

"He could've come to us if it weren't for you," Jim Morita said, adding one of Steve's last carpals to the pile of collected bones. Morita and Loki stared at it—the last remnants of Captain Steven Rogers.

Besides the occasional chattering of his skull, there was no sign of life: no indication that this had been a living, vibrant man. Morita looked Loki in the eyes.

"You better take care of him."

"I will," Loki promised, overwhelmed. He wasn't sure there was anyone else in all the worlds that would've made this sacrifice for him; wasn't sure he deserved it.

He suddenly felt incredibly weary. He had spent his life trying to prove his worth to the Aesir, to Odin.

How could he ever meet the expectations Steve's beloved placed on him? He'd only ever looked out for himself.

"You used the energy from your bond," Colonel Phillips said, eyeing Loki casually as he tapped his fingers on the edge of the stone tableau. Did that man miss _nothing?_

"You could use it to break free and you didn't. But don't try anything funny, buster, or you'll be in for a world of hurt."

"I _won't_," Loki scowled. How had Steve put up with this man for as long as he had? Loki would've gone mad if he had had this monster of a man accompanying him in the afterlife. He was so... _perceptive_.

"Why not?" Colonel Phillips crossed his arms as he raised a disbelieving eyebrow, his frown deepening.

Loki stood, holding Steve's skulls carefully. "Because—" Loki trailed off as he floundered for the right words.

Because nobody had ever come back for him, and if Loki owed anything to anyone, it was to Steve.

Because everybody had accepted he would be the villain, and Steve hadn't. That was worth more to Loki than anything Odin could ever hope to offer him.

Because Steve believed there was good in him, when the rest of the world didn't, and that had never happened before. Loki had never felt the need to prove himself to the world, but he had to prove to Steve that he was worth this devotion.

"Because," Loki repeated hotly, "I don't have to give you a reason."

"That's not good enough!" Falsworth puffed up his chest and balled his fists.

Loki rolled his eyes and scoffed.

"I do not think—_gods,_ what is _wrong_ with you?" Loki hissed as Gabe shoved him. "How did you people ever win that war? You're so petty."

"Cool your heels, Gabe," Bucky cut in sharply before Gabe could respond. He looked at her disbelievingly, following his muddy brown eyes to where they had settled on Loki. "Steve believed the effort was worth it."

Loki realized all eyes were on him, and he sought the words that would put them at ease. He had never explained himself to anyone before, much less to a collection of dead humans. But as Steve's team stared at him, he realized that these few, more than anyone else, were owed an explanation.

"He is my only friend," Loki finally admitted, when the pressure to talk became too great.

"He gave up Peggy for you," Morita said.

"He gave up all of us." Falsworth organized Steve's sad collection of bones, as if he could restore dignity to the pile. But they were only calcium and minerals and a dying skull that regarded them impassively.

"I know," Loki said. "I know all this and more. My word is not much to my own people, but if you will take it, I give you my word: your actions have not been in vain."

Steve's skull shifted, the gaping holes regarding him. In life, his face was a moving painting; his vibrant blue eyes betrayed a thousand thoughts without having to say a word.

Loki had become an expert at the large swath of Steve's expressions and without them; Loki was left wondering what Steve was thinking. Loki thought to try their bond, but it was tenuous enough and he was afraid that if he pushed it he would lose Steve to Hel forever.

"We have to go," Jacques said, breaking Loki from his contemplation. He looked away from Steve to see the team eyeing one another unhappily.

"We had hoped to stay, but our energy is expended," Gabe explained. "We will stay, for Steve, but there will not be enough energy for us to return home and we will be lost here. When Steve comes for us, we won't be there."

"Go," Loki said, holding Steve's skull to his chest tightly as if by doing so he could keep the soul of his bonded safe. "I'll return him whole. You have my word," he swore again.

The team refused to move until Bucky reached forward, placing his hand on the charred curve of the skull.

"I miss you, buddy," he said. "We'll wait for you, but don't hurry home. We've always been there."

Steve chattered at him.

"We'll be ready," Gabe promised, and Loki wondered what had been said. He didn't think he had the right to know.

"We're with you, when you need us," Colonel Phillips said. "I was wrong about you, but I think you knew that," he finished, turning away abruptly, and if there were tears in his eyes, Loki thought it wise not to mention it.

They slowly dissolved into globes of golden light, and as Loki watched them go he thought he'd never seen anything so beautiful. Bucky was the last to go, a shimmering form that erupted in brilliance, before he, too, was gone. He looked down at the skull in his hands. It stared back with a fathomless sadness that Loki was only beginning to appreciate.

"I'm sorry," Loki told him, slumping against the stone wall next to Steve's pile of bones. His skull was hardly moving, and Loki realized how much energy he must have been drawing from his friends. "Can you understand me?"

The jaw opened and closed slowly, and Loki took it as the affirmative. He wasn't sure if they'd make it back, but for the first time in his life, he felt like there wasn't an alternative.

"You're probably wondering what's next," Loki tried, feeling absolutely foolish. He wondered, distantly, if this was yet another ploy of the Serpent's. But the sound of decapitated skulls sucking on her remains was awfully realistic, and if it was a ruse, it was a good one.

Steve's jaw skewed open as if to say, "Let's go home."

"I am done with this place," Loki agreed. "We'll walk out." It sounded more doable than it was. Now that the fight was over, his injuries refused to be ignored.

His eyesight was still lopsided, and the damage the Serpent did complained loudly. His legs felt rubbery, and even if he knew where he was going, he wasn't sure he would be able to get there. He fell back against the tableau once his legs gave way.

"We'll rest a little longer," he said.

Steve said nothing back.

0o0o0o0o0o

Gradually, the ruddy light of the sky faded until they were walking in blackness and Howard's ethereal glow became more prominent, reflecting off the crystalized femurs that jutted from the earth in corrupted stalagmites and stalactites.

"Is that a light?" Natasha asked suddenly, squinting in the dark.

"Don't go towards it," Tony joked.

Natasha's smile was wan in the eerie light, but Tony smiled back all the same.

The light came closer, and balls of gold consolidated around them, taking form for just a moment.

A face Tony thought he recognized materialized before him, golden arms resting on his shoulders.

"Take them home," it whispered, and then they were gone as soon as they'd come.

"What was that?" Clint asked, his voice too loud in the cave.

"I don't know," Tony said, shaken.

"That," Natasha replied, "Was Steve's team."

"I'm not sure I want to go any further," Clint said, voicing Tony's thoughts.

"We've come this far," Natasha said.

"But if they left—I mean, did anyone see him? Was he in their number? What if we're too late?"

"Then we must bring them back," Thor said firmly, "even if there is naught left but bones. We will not leave Captain Steve and my brother in this place to rot."

Moving forward, they heard the soft whisper of words, and Tony realized he recognize the timbre of Loki's voice. He heard Thor let out a relieved sigh, and he paused, finding his teammates had done the same, to listen to the hushed words echoing in the cavern.

"I shouldn't have left you," Loki was saying. "I was afraid... I was afraid that, because you weren't mentioned in the sagas, it meant you had died before they came to pass and it was folly to know you. I was afraid that I had let my guard down you and you would take advantage of it. And I'm sorry because I thought immortality was a gift, and I was wrong."

Tony began moving, thinking they were intruding on something private, and was embarrassed because, after how he had judged Loki, he wasn't sure he had the right to be witness to it.

None of them knew what to expect when they found Loki, but nothing Tony'd ever seen in Niflheim or on Earth prepared him for the sight that met them, and his heart plummeted when he realized just close to the truth Thor had been.

The closed cave opened into a cavernous room and it was here that the bones that they had seen throughout their journey had been sharpened to spikes. In areas where such structures grew, decapitated heads had slid down to the base of the stalagmites, sucking contently on the numerous bones of something dead.

Loki was propped up against a tablet, the top of which was slick with blood. His face had been badly burned by what looked to be acid, and one green eye was missing entirely. A pile of what looked to be human bones was collected beside him. He cupped a skull gingerly in his hands.

Tony tried to piece together what he knew of the situation, but he refused to acknowledge to whom the skull in Loki's hands belonged, or to whom he must have been speaking.

At their approach, Loki looked up and gave them all a weary smile. For a moment, he looked very young and very sad.

"Brother," Thor's voice was choked as he moved across the room clumsily, scooping his brother into a hug. Loki weathered it, one hand still clasped gently around the skull.

"We have found him," Howard said in Tony's ear. The glow that his father had exuded throughout the duration of their journey was brightening, as if he was being torn from the inside by its brilliance.

"I must go."

"Don't," Tony pleaded. "Not again. I need you."

"You haven't needed me for a long time," Howard smiled, resting a glowing hand on Tony's shoulder before pulling him into a hug. "I couldn't be prouder," he whispered in his ear.

Before Tony could say anything, his father erupted into golden light, his form condensing into a glowing orb that rushed out of the cave to follow Steve's team. Tony watched him go, long after the light had blinked out of existence, before turning back to Loki and what was left of Steve. The skull in Loki's stared back at him impassively with its grinning face.

Thor had loosed Loki, and he was propped up against the tablet. Blood entrails were wrapped around the platform. The Jotunn refused to set the skull on it, instead keeping it wrapped close to his chest.

"Is he alive?" Natasha asked. Loki looked down at the skull.

"Yes, but barely. We may still return him, if we are mindful and bring all his bones back."

"They're only bones though, right?" Clint asked, kneeling beside the pile, a rib clutched in his hand.

"They're all that's left of Steve. Every bone is a collection of memories-moments and days and years—all of them something that made up Steve's life. He's lost enough, he doesn't deserve to lose another day."

Tony looked at Loki in surprise. He had wanted to hate the god for causing Steve's death, but he found he didn't have the strength, realized he had hated enough things for long enough, and it made him tired.

"I can't go back out there," Tony said. "I don't want to."

"We have to find Bruce," Natasha returned firmly, but her face was uncertain as she gazed at Steve's skeleton. She knew as well as he that they couldn't embark on another journey without getting Steve back first. The prospect of coming back here clearly excited her as much as it did him.

"We've got to get him back," Loki said. "Bruce can wait."

"Hey, just wait a minute—" Tony started.

A slow clapping interrupted him. The Avengers turned as one at the sound, and Steve's skull started chattering excitedly. The sound sent a chill down Tony's spine.

A young, well-figured woman with long, black hair and porcelain skin walked into the cavern. A long scar marred her features, but she was still strangely beautiful. Her feet were bare, but she seemed unperturbed by the sharp ground.

"Who are you?" Tony snapped.

"Hel," Loki said darkly, and Tony looked again. Though they both bore a scar, there was little other resemblance between this woman and the Queen of Hell.

She smiled.

"Surprised?" she cooed. "As if I was always a hag. Ask you father about how I got my wound," she said, touching her face.

"You have not looked such in many years," Loki said. "How is it that you do so now?"

"You've missed out on a lot, Loki. It is a shame: you are the cause of all of it. You, and your human," she knelt beside the Jotunn, resting a hand on the skull in his hands.

"I owe you my gratitude," she told the skull. "I had thought hope was gone, but you've changed it all, just yet."

Steve's teeth clacked as he responded. Her face broke in a happy smile, and Tony appreciated how beautiful she must have been before whatever it was that had happened, happened.

"You tease," she grinned before standing, her face shuttering close to hide the smile until Tony thought he must have imagined it. She turned to eye the Avengers.

"Congratulations, you have succeeded in what many could not, _would_ not, do. I've given your human enough of my own energy that you may see him returned whole to the Hall of Waiting."

"What about Bruce?"

Hel's face grew confused before clearing.

"Ah, the human with the split soul. He has left my realm to travel the World Tree, and I can answer for him no longer. You have my word: when he left my realm, he was safe. When he is ready, if he ever is, he will return to you. But you cannot search for him, for he is a traveler of Yggdrasil, and that is a journey that must be taken alone."

"You let him leave? But you said—" Clint started.

"I know what I said," Hel said sharply. "But I think that a human on the branches of our great tree will upset the Fates, and that is a thought that heartens me greatly. Now go—I gave your Captain my energy, but he is waning as we speak. I have summoned the Bitfrost for you. It waits outside the cave. Here," she said, offering a velvet bag. "For the bones," she elucidated when Clint took it, confusion evident on his face.

Natasha and Clint knelt quickly, placing the bones in the bag with as much reverence as they could as Thor held it open. Loki continued leaning against his support, obviously spent, his long hands wrapped around Steve's skull. It shimmered a faint blue, but that was the only indication that there was anything living about it at all.

Hel bent to the earth and grabbed a handful of rock and debris. She allowed it to clatter to the floor, her face thoughtful. Upon standing, she turned to leave.

"Hey, lady," Tony said. She stopped, looking over her shoulder at Tony with dark eyes. "Why the change of heart?"

The goddess hesitated before saying, "For the first time since the day the Sagas were delivered, I have choice, and that was given to me by you and yours. I pay my dues," she said, before disappearing down the long corridor.

When they had ensured all of what was left of Steve had been gathered, they began to head back out. Nat and Clint took up residence besides Thor, leaving Loki to stumble behind them. Tony could see the acid had scoured more than just his face. His legs and chest were pitted, blackened blood scouring the edges.

Tony slid his shoulder under Loki's arm. He felt the demigod resist before he sagged against him.

Tired and battered, they negotiated the way out of the cave. As Hel had promised, the glittering road that heralded the way home was waiting for them. Thor stepped onto the boulevard of stars. Tony paused at the entrance, his eyes scanning the distance in some hope that he'd see Bruce on the horizon.

"Stark—" Loki said quietly beside him. "Steve…"

"I know," Tony sighed, stepping onto the Bitfrost. "We're going to get you both home. Just hold on."

Chapter End

The quote and the "Death in Tehran" story is from Viktor Frankl's book, _Man's Search for Meaning_. If you read no other book in your life, pick this one up.

I recognize that the comics have Bucky return as the Winter Soldier. I debated having him present in Hel (and clearly dead) but I figured that I'm AU enough at this point that it doesn't matter. Additionally, I'm not sure about the mechanism behind Bucky's return, but I decided the Winter Soldier will not be showing up, so having him alive as a plot point didn't make sense.


	8. Lazarus Died and He's Buried Now

Lazarus Got Old and Died and He's Buried Now

_Even in the depths of our bones_

_We can feel effects of the ides we've faced alone_

_Through long nights and changing tides we wonder_

_If we're even worth healing now_

The Ides—Me Like Bees

Clint's stomach twisted as they were deposited onto Heimdall's platform. He managed to swallow the bile that climbed up his throat, wincing at the acid left behind.

Frigga and Odin waited for them, the queen's face tightening as her eyes flitted over each of the Avengers. Her frown eased slightly as her gaze settled on the shimmering ghost of her son, and she closed the distance between them, wrapping her hand around his and pulling him free from Tony's side.

Clint watched in wonder as Loki continued to treat Steve's skull reverently.

Since arriving in Asgard, it, too, had become opaque, but with less substance than Loki seemed to have taken on.

Clint wondered what that meant, though he thought it couldn't be good. As he watched, the queen tried to remove it from Loki, who refused to let go. After struggling briefly, she gave up trying to get Loki to relinquish it.

"Are you all right, my son?" Frigga addressed Thor instead, who straightened, trying to look more robust than he was.

"It is not me you should be concerned about, mother. We must hasten to the Hall; I fear Captain Steve does not have much time."

"No," Frigga murmured, "I think you are right. Let us be of good haste. My healers will put you all right once we have returned the souls to their bodies," she said over her shoulder as she moved quickly away from Heimdall's platform and into the arching halls of Asgard.

The team formed a ragged line behind her. At the rear, Natasha limped beside Clint.

"You can lean on me, if you'd like," he offered.

"Thanks," she said tightly, sweat beading on her forehead. Clint wrapped an arm around her side to help her along.

He thought the bag of bones in his free hand would offset his gait, but he found them insubstantial.

"Do you think he'll come back?" Nat asked, and Clint didn't have to ask whom she was talking about. He looked down at the bag in his hand and wondered the same thing himself—everything knew about Steve told him he wasn't a man to give up: after all, he'd found Loki. Clint wondered if that was enough for the man to figure his mission was done.

"I don't think Steve knows how to die," he answered truthfully.

Natasha huffed beside him, a gasp of what he thought might have been a laugh.

"I think you're right," she agreed.

When they entered the Hall of Waiting, they took up residence beside the bodies of their teammates—and hell, if Clint hadn't just called Loki a teammate... but then, something had changed, and Clint didn't know if it was that he'd gained an appreciation for Loki's fate, or if it was because he'd been present for Loki's confession or maybe it was all of these reasons and a million more.

Before he began his transition back to the living, Loki finally relinquished Steve's fading, charred skull to Frigga.

The Avengers watched as the ghost of his being slipped back into his body. Almost immediately, it lost some of its deathly pallor, and though his chest heaved, he was quickly attacked by deep, wracking coughs. Through the fit, the god remained unconscious.

Frigga placed a gentle hand on Loki's cheek before she turned to Clint and motioned towards the bag that carried Steve's bones.

"Did you bring all of him back?"

"We did," Thor said as he settled into an open chair, the wood creaking beneath his weight.

Clint noticed, not for the first time, that the god was shaky on his feet and though the blood had dried and crusted on his face, the wound on his brow was no less gruesome.

Clint tentatively brought a hand to his own face; he could feel the charred and blistered skin beneath the pads of his fingers, and knew he probably didn't look too good himself.

"Set him down. Carefully, now," she ordered. Clint pulled the faint bones from the bag.

Clint didn't know enough about human anatomy beyond the main bones to know what fit where, and as he looked into the bag, he found himself lost.

Frigga, however, obviously knew what she was doing as she went about piecing together parts of Steve's skeleton.

The Avengers watched in silence as she'd placed Steve's skull into his head.

Clint ignored the queasy feeling as the skull sunk into place. He tried to remind himself that the skeleton was simply a manifestation of Steve's soul, and that his body's own skeleton actually existed; that the bones they'd collected were the metaphorical pieces left of Steve's soul and not his actually self- but it sat oddly in his stomach all the same.

Thor stood up heavily, bending to add a rib cage, and slowly the team pieced Steve together, setting the bones where they were meant to rest.

"He is missing a bone," Frigga said when they were done.

"We put them all back," Clint argued. "All 205, I counted them."

"There are 206 in the human body," Frigga said.

"Oh," Clint said, looking down at his captain. "

"What does that mean for Steve?" Natasha asked.

Frigga bent to pick up Steve's limp right hand. Rigor mortis hadn't set in—it couldn't, Clint knew, as a condition of this strange chamber—but he couldn't shake the feeling their companions had been dead entirely too long. A man wasn't meant to return to life after days (or months—really, how long had they been gone?) spent dead. The science didn't support it. Clint had never bothered to worry himself with the actual stages of decomposition, but he knew as well as anybody that a body dead this long should be swollen and rotting.

But Steve simple looked asleep, and somehow, that upset Clint more than if he'd lain rotting.

"It is only a tiny finger bone in his hand. It could be five minutes or half a day of his life or an entire summer, I cannot know. Regardless," she said, replacing the hand by the captain's side, "It ought to matter not. He should return to us presently."

The Avengers looked back at Steve's body, but no breath moved his chest, no flush of blood returned to his cheeks.

"Shit," Tony said.

"We almost lost him," Frigga explained, "We must wait. When he is ready, he will return." She looked down at the body. "If he is so inclined."

0o0o0o0o0o

Tony wondered how long they were meant to stand vigil over Steve's corpse.

While Loki was breathing easy now, it had been several hours, and Steve had had yet to draw his first breath.

Tony could hope with the best of them, but he was beginning to think that Steve wouldn't return, and he could not begrudge his Captain of that. In fact, he was sure that he, himself, wouldn't come back if their situations were reversed.

He searched the faces of his team.

Thor looked tired but pensive, his hands clasped and his elbows resting on his knees as he watched his brother. The healers had cleaned his face and attended to his wound, but he still looked out of sorts.

Natasha was pale under the grime and dirt smeared across her face.

Clint looked worst of all—the blistering of his skin was one that would've required skin grafts on Earth, Tony was sure, but Frigga's healers had applied a poultice and swore he'd return to normal in quick order.

Frigga's army of healers had healed them all in turn, but their words of magic and soft hands couldn't mend the things that haunted them—couldn't bring Bruce back to them, couldn't wake Steve if he refused to live.

Tony leaned forward, ready to call Steve's death, if nobody else would.

Just as he wondered how to form the suggestion, Steve gasped.

Tony was at his side in an instant, could feel the man straining as his unused lungs refused to draw air in.

Steve turned on his side, his face turning blue, and the muscles in his neck bulging. Natasha hit him on his back: it seemed to be what their captain needed, as Tony could hear the rush of air as Steve sucked it in. He coughed deeply, as Loki had done, and they watched as the man regulated his breathing. Tony could feel warmth return to his skin, bright blue eyes fluttered open, confusion apparent as they met Tony's.

"Tony?" Steve croaked, his brow furrowing, his hand flying to his chest. "What happened? Everything hurts."

Tony chuckled, ignoring the way it came out as a sob instead.

"I don't think there's any way to sum up what happened in ten words or less. I promise I'll write up a full after action report once we get back," he said with a jaunty salute.

"Hey, Cap," Natasha said softly, kneeling beside Steve. "Welcome back."

"I don't remember—" he started. "Loki!" He tried to get up. Nat pushed him back down with a firm hand.

"Just stay put for a moment: you had quite the experience. Loki's safe," she nodded her head in the demigod's direction, and Steve rolled onto his back, his form visibly relaxing as he caught saw of hid bonded.

"I had the strangest dream."

Natasha and Tony shared a look.

Tony hadn't seen Steve enter the cave, but he'd seen what had been left of the man. If the captain thought it was a dream, Tony found that he didn't want to disabuse the man of the notion.

"It was no—" Thor started before Clint elbowed him.

Perplexed blue eyes sought the owner of the voice, and Steve smiled.

"Thor," he said. "You are well."

"I am, as is my brother, thanks to you."

Steve's head rolled to the side to assay Loki's unconscious form.

"What happened?" He asked again.

"It is a long story," Frigga interrupted after the teammates shared a long silence. "And one I am sure your team will fill you in on once you are well."

"Okay," Steve agreed placidly. "Where's Bruce? Is he okay?"

"Bruce is fine," Natasha said quickly. "He'll be here when he can." She looked up at Tony.

"Everyone's okay?" Steve asked insistently.

"Everyone's fine, how about you, o' fearless leader?" Tony's tone was strained. "We were about to go for a run, wanna join?"

"You'll have to go without me," Steve said, coughing, "I think I'm going to sleep a little longer. I'm pretty tired."

"Just rest, we'll be here," he said, looking up over Steve at his teammates. They refused to meet his gaze.

When Steve had fallen asleep, it was a long time before anyone broke the gentle rhythm of his breathing. Natasha stood up from where she was crouching at Steve's side.

"He doesn't remember anything," she addressed Frigga, "Will that change?"

"I do not know. I hope for his sake, he does not, but I fear it will not be so." Frigga moved to cup Steve's face. "He has saved my son twice now. I do not know if I can ever return that debt."

"He's a good man," Tony said.

"He is," Frigga agreed. "Come, we must let them rest."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

"Wake up," a sharp voice said.

Steve winced. He was floating just underneath the surface of a warm lake, dappled sunlight visible behind the ruddy glow of his eyelids.

He thought it strange he was floating _under _the surface, but because he could breathe easily, he did not dwell on the semantics.

Steve ignored the voice, allowing the water to wash over him. His family hard largely vacationed at Cape May, but one summer they'd spent a month instead at Lake Chautauqua. His parents had been considering buying a resort home on the lake at one point, but then the economic crash had hit and this father had died, and they hadn't even had the money to feed themselves.

He floated beneath the placid waters of the lake and was happy.

"Wake _up," _The voice insisted.

Distantly, Steve knew he recognized it, and he wanted to address the worry that underlined the brittle tone, but he found that he could not be bothered, wanted to stay beneath the lake as long as possible. He couldn't remember why, but he knew that were he to surface, it would be an unpleasant experience.

But then, the choice wasn't left up to him, and a firm hand on his shoulder shook him free from the tranquil waters.

Steve surfaced into pain. He blinked rapidly, blurry eyes focusing on Loki's very stern, very worried face.

"Loki?" he asked, trying to sit up, but Loki's grip on his shoulder wouldn't allow it.

"My mother healed you as well as she could and your body is doing the rest of the work, but you should not move."

Everything hurt, his chest most of all, and Steve felt as if it were pure iron that ran through his veins instead of blood. He could hardly move his arm to his face so that he could clear away the sleep that clogged his eyes.

"What happened?"

"What do you remember?" Loki asked. There was something in his face that had changed since Steve had seen him last, and he struggled to understand it.

"An alley," Steve said. "There was a woman, and she wanted me to send you a message. She was angry she couldn't find you, but I don't think I knew why."

"Skadi," Loki clarified.

Steve raised his brows. "You know her?"

"Yes," Loki frowned. "What else?"

"She killed me," Steve said, but that didn't make sense. It must have just been a terrible wound, because Steve was pretty sure even Loki's gift of immortality didn't mean he'd survive death, and he was pretty sure this wasn't heaven. Loki's grip on his arm tightened.

"What do you remember after that?"

Steve looked at Loki. His face was drawn, his green eyes bright with something Steve couldn't recognize. He frowned, feeling like it must be important that he remember, but everything was a jumble and the things he _did _remember didn't make sense. He said as much.

"Tell me anyway."

"I was in Hell. The Howling Commandos were there, and we were on a mission to save you." Steve laughed weakly. "I told you it doesn't make sense."

Loki settled back onto his bed, his face contemplative.

"Do you remember what happened, when you were in…Hell?"

Steve tried to order his jumbled memories, but they seemed to be little more than fever-dreams garnered from his injuries. He'd had enough of those as a child to not give them credence, but Loki looked so serious that Steve began to question what he thought he knew.

"Did I die?"

"What do you remember?" Loki pressed, refusing to answer the question.

His sense of foreboding growing, Steve looked down at his hands. They were scrunched around the blankets, and he forced himself to loosen them, restoring blood flow into them.

"A lot of blood... my skin was burned from my bone and the smell…" he trailed off. "But it was only a dream. What's this about?"

"It is nothing. Forget I mentioned it," his companion waved his hand dismissively.

Steve sat up, his entire body complaining from the motion. He rested against the headboard, finding that moving this far had totally sapped his energy.

He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so tired, and he didn't know why. Everything was slightly off, and nothing made sense.

"Loki, tell me what the hell is going on."

"The sagas have changed," the demigod said inexplicably.

"Changed?" Steve echoed. It didn't explain his companion's strange mood, not entirely, but it put it in context. "I thought they couldn't be changed. _You_ told me they could not be changed."

"I did not think they could," Loki tossed Frigga's book of Sagas onto Steve's lap. Looking at Loki for a long moment, he finally flipped them over to glance down at the pages.

Inside, he found his sketches still present, but the words he'd drawn next to them were gone. He flipped through the blank pages before looking back up at the Jotunn.

"What does this mean?"

"It means nothing is written. There is no Ragnarök, and I am not its herald."

"Well," Steve tried a smile, "that's great, right?

Loki frowned. "Yes, it is."

"You don't _look_ happy about it." Steve closed the book, tracing his fingers over the engravings on the cover, unconsciously following the circle of the embossed World Tree.

Loki didn't answer, which Steve found odd. He'd never known for Loki not to have something to say, even if it was snippy.

"Loki?" Steve asked.

When his bonded looked up at him, he looked so lost and _sad _and Steve knew something terrible had happened, something unfathomably horrendous, and he couldn't remember what. Worse, he didn't remember why he couldn't remember, and that frightened him. The last time he'd lost a gap in his life, he'd forfeited the memories willingly to save Loki, but this time, he couldn't even piece together why he couldn't remember.

He opened his mouth to speak, but shut it just as quickly as the door was thrown open and the Avengers charged in.

Seeing their companions awake, the rushed over, falling immediately upon the pair, and Steve felt claustrophobic as Natasha hugged him. He looked over her shoulder to see Loki in a similar hold, Thor's massive arms wrapped around his brother.

To Steve's surprise, Loki returned the hug, his thin hands wrapped around Thor's broad back. He could see the tendons in Loki's forearms flex—actually squeezing Thor in a reciprocated hug. Loki tucked his head onto his brother's shoulder and looked across at Steve.

"We're so glad you're back," Natasha pulled away, her eyes bright with tears, and Steve didn't think he'd ever seen the Black Widow cry.

He silently reevaluated the gap in his memories, wondered more than ever what had transpired.

"I'm glad to be back," Steve said, because he thought it was the right thing to say.

"We thought lost you," Clint said, settled on the side of Steve's bed. "You're looking better."

Steve rubbed his chest, in the place where he'd dreamt he'd been stabbed, but he was beginning to suspect it hadn't been a dream, and when Clint's face frowned in worry, his suspicions were solidified.

"Does your chest hurt?"

"A little," the captain admitted, "But it's getting better."

"That's great," Clint smiled lightly, deepening Steve's overall sense of _wrongness_.

Glancing at the faces of his team, he could see fading bruises and limbs wrapped in bandages and covered in poultices.

_Something_ had happened: he could recall the alley with clarity, and something about the Bitfrost and driftwood. They'd clearly come to Asgard, but as to the why, Steve was completely clueless but he had his growing suspicions. He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, and the intricate paintings were vaguely familiar, like a dream lost on the waking.

Frigga's face was closed off when Steve turned to her, and he knew that he'd have to corner her to get any answers. Currently, even the thought of getting out of bed seemed like a bridge too far, and Steve realized he'd have to be patient.

"I'm hungry," he said aloud, and at least that was true. "I feel like I haven't eaten in ages."

Tony laughed, but the sound was hollow.

"I bet," he agreed. Steve felt his frustration bubble, like he'd walked in on the end of a tale, and everyone knew the story but him.

"We prepared you some food," Frigga said, ushering in a squad of servants to deliver gold trays filled with an array of food to he and Loki. "We shall let you be. Come, heroes," she said to the team, her robes swishing as she turned and headed out, the team following obediently.

Once they had gone, Steve looked at Loki.

"What the _hell_ happened?"

The demigod picked up his fork and jabbed a grape.

"I am hungry and not inclined towards talk," he said.

Steve frowned at his food, finding his appetite has suddenly abandoned him.

0o0o0o0o0o0o

"He doesn't remember," Clint said blankly when they were safely out of Steve's range of hearing.

Frigga had ushered them into the antechamber of her own quarters, depositing them at a resplendent and ornate table, and Tony wondered if there was anything in this realm that didn't border on ostentatious. He supposed that if he had nothing but time on his hands, his own domiciles would look similar.

"Well, how could he?" Tony settled his head in his hands. "Hel said his bones were memories, if there was that little left of him, I imagine it's going to be a while before he's got it all figured out."

"I don't think his psyche could deal with the trauma of remembering everything all at once anyway," Nat commented. "Thor and I saw him enter that cave, and he didn't look good. I don't know what happened to him, but there was barely anything left... just his bones..." she trailed off, her face paling at the memory.

"We've got to tell him something," Clint said. "He's clearly figured out that something's going on."

"I would advise against the full truth," Thor said, stopping his nervous pacing. "Natasha is right, if he does not remember, it is for the best. I think he would be better suited if he never remembered this at all."

Thor couldn't shake the image burned into his brain of the remnants of Steve in the cavern. A man wasn't meant to be reduced to nothing and put back together piece by piece.

"We've never been lucky," Tony said, leaning against the heavy wooden chair. "I don't see why it would start now."

"Since when were you so maudlin?" Clint snapped.

"Since I went to Hell and back," Tony returned heatedly. "Steve's lucky: if he thinks its all a dream, he's better off than the rest of us."

"Unfortunately," Natasha said leaning forward against the table, "I think it's only a matter of time."

"What do we do when he remembers?" Clint asked.

The Avengers looked uneasily at one another, but were saved from answering when Frigga reentered the room, a jug of mead heavy in her hands.

She shooed the servants away, pouring the amber liquid into the goblets. When she was finished, she poured a glass for herself and took up residence in an empty chair.

"A toast," she said calmly, with none of the drama and ceremony that Clint had grown used to, "to your safe return."

"Hear, hear," Thor said, clinking his mug against Clint's.

When they were done, Frigga held her goblet between her fine hands and looked at the team evenly.

"There are not the words in any of the languages I know to suitably thank you for what you have done. I understand you have returned one less than one you set out with, the one called Bruce."

"Hel said he had left Niflheim to travel the branches of Yggdrisil," Thor said. "But I have little cause to believe her."

"I have spoken to Heimdall, and he confirmed that what Hel said was truth. Bruce Banner is crossing lands no man has crossed before—not even your own captain. When he returns—and he will—it will benefit all who live in these worlds."

"How do you know he'll be back, and why can't we get him?" Clint asked.

"When you were fourteen and ran away from your social services to join Glenn at the Ren Faire, if you have been collected by the people who sought you, would you have been better off for it?"

Clint paled. "How do you know about that?"

"Wait," Tony leaned in, the contents of his cup sloshing over the edges from his sudden movement, "You were in a _Ren Faire_?!" He laughed loudly. "Is that where you learned how to use that bow of yours?"

"Yes," Clint said shortly, taking a deep gulp from his cup. He could feel the alcohol rush settle in the pit of his stomach, and stared into the bowels of the goblet. He'd only shared pieces of his past with Natasha, and never with the Avengers, so he was completely astonished that Frigga knew about it.

"And you, Tony," Frigga said quickly, before her could dig into Hawkeye further, "Your depravity, promiscuity, and general inebriation mark a large part of your past. But regardless of the number of times Pepper Potts urged you to change your ways, it was nothing that she said that finally motivated you to stop, was it?"

Tony's humor faded, and he leaned back against the chair.

"No," he said. "It wasn't."

"Then," Frigga said, taking a dignified sip of mead, "you should see why stopping Bruce in his mission will not prove advantageous.

"It seems we are out of mead. I shall return shortly," she said, standing up smoothly, her dark robes swishing around her as she exited the antechamber. When she had left, Natasha placed her head in her hand and smiled laconically at Clint.

"Why Clint," she purred, "You never told me you were part of the Ren Faire circuit."

0o0o0o0o0o0o

Loki rose from his bed, bones popping from disuse.

It was the most disgusting sound he'd ever heard.

Crossing the room, he came to rest at an open window. Even moving such a distance proved tiresome, and he rested against the marble pillars.

Asgard's skies were glowing brilliant in sunset. The sun hung low, a welcome, enduring light. Perfect clouds settled blue and purple against the horizon.

Behind him, he heard Steve struggle to stand, the sound of sheets hitting the floor followed by the louder thud of Steve's feet and his wobbly, dragging gait across the floor as he came to rest beside Loki.

When he reached the marble deck, his face was drawn and pale beneath his golden hair, and he leaned heavily on the stone bannister. From the way he held himself, Loki could tell the man was in pain.

If Loki had thought he owed the captain before, all of that paled to what had Steve done since then. Loki knew many things, and he knew that he would not have had the strength to turn his back on certain paradise to save another.

"You should stay in bed," Loki said, trying not to sound concerned, "My mother will be unhappy."

"I feel as though I've been laying down forever," Steve said.

Eir, Frigga's medical companion, had healed Steve's wounds as well as she could, but red seeped through the white bandages, staining them pink. He was holding his chest unconsciously, as if to keep his insides from pouring out once more. The god could see a sister stain evident on his back, and he winced in sympathy.

It was not cold, but Steve shivered as the evening wind swept over them, goose pimples rising on his skin.

"We thought you dead," Loki said, because it was much easier to phrase everything in "we" and "us".

Loki couldn't care less how their team, how the Aesir, or even how his mother felt: when Steve had stumbled into his cave, a skeleton held together by little more than sinew and his very dead team, Loki was convinced it would be the last he saw of him.

"I'm not that easy to get rid of," Steve said lightly.

"No," Loki agreed, "You have proven that most definitively."

Steve looked out across the horizon, and Loki looked at Steve.

Deep circles ringed his eyes, and his skin was so pale as to almost be translucent. If he looked hard enough, Loki could see his veins throb beneath this skin, as if all of Steve's life was just there, under the surface of barely tenable skin.

As the stain on the bandages bloomed, Loki found himself moving in closer. Before the captain could pull away, he pushed a firm hand to his chest.

"Loki—what?"

"You have reopened your wounds," Loki explained, feeling Steve's blood seeping onto his hand. He tightened his hold around the man, pressing his hands against the gaping hole on his back. "Quickly, you must apply pressure to your chest, and I will apply it to your back. I will summon the healers."

"Loki," Steve said quietly, "I'm not dying. This will heal."

In that moment, Loki wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry, because Steve _had _died, and he'd almost been reduced to nothing, and Loki had almost lost his only friend before he knew he had him at all.

Steve gripped Loki's hand on his chest, holding him by the wrist. He gently removed Loki from the stained bandages before pulling the demigod into an embrace.

"It's okay," he said. "We're okay."

Loki pulled away immediately, his face drawing into a frown.

"I know that," he said angrily. "I simply do not want to answer to your team should they find I have allowed you to bleed out once more."

The captain smiled tiredly.

"Of course not," he agreed as he leaned back against the marble railing, his arms folding underneath him as he returned to look out across the golden lands. "I don't remember a lot, but there is one thing that I can recall about my time in Niflheim with clarity."

"What?" Loki snapped.

"I was worried about you, too," he said.

Loki scowled, his eyes seeking the golden horizons and the sinking orb of Asgard's sun.

His entire life, Loki had known his mission if not the details, and he'd executed his every plan with the knowing that before his time was through, he would see the end of everyone he had ever cared about.

Except—he'd been wrong about all of it, and he had met Death in Tehran.

He wondered if Steve knew the true impact of the things he had done—wanted to ask why Steve had endured what he had to find Loki, but found he was afraid of the answer, and afraid of the responsibility it held.

"Help me back?" Steve pushed away from the bannister.

"Just this once," Loki said, wrapping an arm around the captain's side, mindful of his wounds as he helped him limp across the room.

By the time they'd reached his bedside, Steve's head was lolling against his chest and the image sparked something deep inside him.

Settling his bonded to the bed, he shook the man's shoulder. Steve attempted to bat him away.

"I am weary," he insisted. "Let me rest."

Loki knew instinctually that Steve's enduring exhaustion was as much a physical manifestation of his psyche's attempt to piece itself back together as it was his mortal wounds.

Loki also knew that this border, between the sleeping and the awakening, bore the time that Steve would be most honest with him. If he squandered this moment, he might not ever discover why Steve had done what he had done. Loki had lived a painfully long time, and no one he'd met in any of his travels had ever been half as selfless as Steve claimed to be.

"Why did you save me?" He asked loudly. Steve winced, blinking blearily at the Trickster.

"I don't remember," he begged off.

"We were dead, and you came for me. I met your friends," Loki said sharply, knowing he bordered on desperation, "You could have gone with them, but you did not."

Steve frowned sleepily, squinting his eyes at Loki as if the light was suddenly too bright, and Loki thought it was strange: Asgard's days were long, and it was almost before memory that he'd actually seen the sun set.

"I miss them."

Loki shook his shoulders. "_Why did you not go with them_?" He nearly shouted.

"You didn't deserve that place," he finally said, just when Loki had almost given up, sure Steve had succumbed to unconsciousness.

"I knew many a creature—be he man or god who would disagree with you."

"They don't know you like I do," Steve said.

"If you were lost there," Loki insisted, "you would be trapped there, cursed to wander those dark lands forever."

"Maybe," Steve said, blue eyes closing shut, his words becoming slurred. He lifted a heavy hand to grasp one of Loki's, tight on his shoulder. "But if I hadn't tried to get you back, then I would've deserved it. And," the captain added, whispering groggily, "You're my friend."

The captain's grip loosened around Loki's hand as he succumbed to unconsciousness.

Loki didn't move a long time, looking down on the sleeping face of his companion. Not for the first time, he was struck but just how young the captain was. He wished he could allocate all of Steve's actions to foolish naivety, but to do so would discredit the man, and Loki found that was not something he was willing to do.

Pulling away from Steve's grasp, he adjusted his hand so that the limb wouldn't fall asleep from being skewed at such a strange angle.

Though he, too, had grown fatigued, he decided to keep watch instead, pulling over a heavy chair and settling into it.

He only fell asleep some time later when he heard the soft rhythm of Steve's breath in sleep, and knew that he would wake once more.

CHAPTER END

After Action Report, or AAR is a common document written up after an event/deployment/exercise to reflect on the relative successes and failures of the mission and ways to make it more next successful for the next evolution

Steve's words, "I am weary, let me rest" is the title of the eponymous song of an old American folk spiritual. As you may have gathered, Steve's religion plays as heavy a background as that of Asgard's.

If there's any confusion about the Avengers putting the bones into Steve's body, just a reminder that whereas the Avengers traveled to Niflheim as their corporal selves, Loki and Steve went as their souls. So, Steve and Loki's bodies are (pretty much) whole in the Hall of Waiting, just waiting for their souls to return.

As for the Avengers and Steve calling Niflheim Hell, I believe the realm held enough of a semblance to what they know of the Christian Hell to be a more familiar word, so the two words, as far as they're concerned, are interchangeable. I just didn't want to confuse the matter earlier by calling it Hell, since the term does seem rooted in Hel, the Goddess of Niflheim.

(To say nothing of the confusion born from the fact that Niflheim is a varying region, segregated between the realms of ice and Hel's own lands.)


	9. Lonesome Traveler

Lonesome Traveler

_I am a weary and a lonesome traveler_

_I traveled here and then I traveled yonder_

_I traveled cold and then I traveled hungry_

_I traveled in the mountains and I traveled in the valleys_

_Traveled with the rich men, and traveled with the poor_

_One of these days I'm going to stop all my traveling_

After a night spent sleeping off Frigga's heady mead, The Avengers returned to the resplendent halls to find Steve and Loki waiting for them at a table in the Queen's antechamber.

The surface of the table they sat at was heavily laden with fruits and pastries, and Tony found he had an appetite where there had been none before.

He picked up something that looked suspiciously like a doughnut heavily encrusted in sugar, and stuffed it into his mouth. He was sure he'd never tasted something so delicious.

"It's good to see you," Natasha said, settling in behind the table with more dignity than Tony had managed before scooping fruit onto her plate. She grabbed an especially powdery pastry and set it on the edge of her golden plate.

"Oh, mead," Thor enthused, pouring a hearty glass for himself before offering the pitcher to the team.

"Fill 'er up." Clint held up his cup. Thor obliged readily, his grin widening as Clint took a healthy swallow.

"It's good to see you," Natasha told Steve, her mouth white from the powdered pastry.

"It's good to be back," Steve smiled back. His plate was full with food, but Tony noticed it had hardly been touched.

"_Shit_!" Tony exclaimed without warning, startling the team. "Pepper's going to be mad as hell. I didn't even leave her a note."

"I'm sure she's better off than we've been," Clint said, setting his emptied goblet down on the table with a heavy thud before grabbing another pastry.

"Why not tell her it was a boring trip?" Loki ventured quietly.

"Was that a joke?" Tony gasped.

"It's not a bad idea," the ranger mused.

Tony laughed, patting Clint on the back.

"I'll just tell her it was a _'bros before hoes'_ kind of thing." He leered.

Clint shot Tony an even look.

"I wouldn't tell her that," he advised sagely. "At least, not if I wanted to survive the conversation."

"Clint is a wise man," Thor said around a mouthful of apple.

"Fair enough." Tony laughed again, but it was strained.

They talked and joked late into the morning, filling the great hall with sounds of merriment.

Tony was only half surprised that Loki's wit could be turned to humor given half the chance—he'd seen it when Loki had broken into his garage, but he hadn't had a chance to really appreciate it until now.

Steve leaned back against his seat, sated and quiet, a distant smile on his face. The team left him alone aside from gentle sidebars.

The day prior, he'd been a collapsed skeleton in a cave in Hell. Even Tony felt this was enough to earn a reprieve from his jabs.

Loki tested the bond between them. Steve's thoughts were turned inward, and Loki could tell he wasn't really paying attention to the words of his team, just that he was happy to hear them.

As if sensing the connection through the bond, Steve looked over at Loki and smiled.

"The gods will demand a feast before we send you home," Odin's voice broke their quiet camaraderie.

"Not now, father," Loki frowned. Thor shot a look at his brother, and Loki realized it was one of agreement.

"We must, or we will never hear the end of it."

"Let them feast alone, then. We are tired," Loki returned tightly.

Odin opened his mouth to disagree but Thor cut him off.

"He is right, Father. We are not yet ready for such an affair."

Odin tried to not look shocked at Thor's vocal agreement with his brother.

"Perhaps a rain check?" Natasha suggested.

"They will not like it, but I suppose arrangements can be made," the All-Father agreed after a moment. "They will sing your tales, sons," Odin rumbled after a moment's pause, and for the first time in Loki's life, he recognized pride in his father's eyes.

"It is not a tale fit for song," Loki said quietly.

0o0o0o0o0o0o

They left without ceremony that evening. Frigga and Odin lead them to Heimdall's gates where the guardian eyed them.

"Loki, you have changed," he observed quietly while the others were distracted, arguing among themselves about some trivial matter.

"Have I?" He asked distantly.

"Indeed. I never thought such a thing possible. My heart is gladdened that we will not fight on the fields of battle," the guardian said. "A new day shines on Asgard."

"Heimdall, the sun is setting," Thor pointed out, coming up from behind them.

"That is not what I meant." The tiniest of smiles quirked Heimdall's lips, though he looked worried when he glanced out at the setting sun.

"Heimdall, open the gate," Odin commanded, silencing the childish quibble the Avengers had started.

Heimdall moved his staff, and a great light shot out from the platform, piercing the heart of the galaxy and disappearing beyond. Steve felt his heart swell. Although he hated traveling on the Bitfrost, knowing that Earth lay at its terminus made the journey easier. It was not the Earth he had grown up in, not the one he'd met Bucky and the Howling Commandos in—that world was gone when they had departed it. But the world now, with its loud music and blaring TV shows and general disregard of common courtesies was also filled with vibrant, _living_, people that hadn't changed as much as Steve had first thought in returning from his seventy-year absence.

"Let's go home," he said.

Tony didn't need to be told twice, and bounded forward eagerly, Natasha and Clint not far behind. The remaining trio stood a moment longer, and Odin clasped a hand each on the shoulders of his sons.

"Today is a joyous day. All of my sons are fit to be rulers of Asgard."

Loki's eyes widened. "Father?"

"You have endured the greatest trials, son, and found worthy. When I leave for Valhalla, I know in my heart Asgard will be well kept."

"You have many years, father," Thor said.

"Perhaps," Odin chuckled. "Now go."

Thor and Loki stepped onto the great road.

"Steven Rogers, a moment," Odin called as they set off.

Steve turned hesitantly.

The All-father weighed him with a heavy eye.

"You have lost much on behalf of my family," he said. "Twice, now, for Loki. You saved him from his fate. You have saved us all."

Steve stood rooted. Years of PR campaigns and leading troops hadn't prepared him for this sort of praise: his brain fumbled for a suitable response before he found one and squared his shoulders.

"It is the duty of any soldier."

Odin visibly fought a smile, aware of Steve's discomfort.

"This is true," he conceded, "And yet few willingly act so selflessly on the behalf of another, especially one such as Loki."

"He's not an evil soul," Steve said quickly in Loki's defense. "I've seen true evil."

"You have," Odin agreed easily. "And yet Loki's path was one of destruction. You have turned his course when I could not: some would say this makes you a greater god than even I."

"I'm just a man!" Steve countered, embarrassed that the king of Aesir would place someone like _Steve_ above himself.

"No longer, Steve Rogers. You have eaten the apples of eternal youth and drunk the mead of immortality. You died and fought through Hel's realms to return my son to me, and you not only returned him whole, but a better man than he was. They will sing your song for many, many years."

"I couldn't have done it without the help of my friends," Steve looked past Odin's shoulder, his eyes growing distant before he locked eyes with Odin again.

"I have lived many years, but in the many centuries, I have yet to see an individual such as you. Steven Rogers, we opened these halls to you before. With my queen and guardian as my witnesses, I say this of you: should anything happen to my sons, you are worthy to take my throne in their stead."

"What? That's not necessary—" Steve protested.

Odin smiled.

"I have three sons and years to live. This will not happen on the morrow, and perhaps not at all."

"Do not fret, Steve Rogers," Frigga broke in kindly, "It is a place of honor, not eventuality."

Steve hesitated before finally nodding. He ducked his head.

"I thank you for the honor you bestow on me," he said.

"Now go, Steve Rogers, before your friends begin to worry," Frigga gave Steve a slight push down the crystal road.

0o0o0o0o

Asgard faded behind Steve, replaced by the dizzying blur of stars and galaxies, and then the familiar surroundings of Earth. He landed lightly next to Loki and Thor, who had been gazing up at the sky quizzically.

"Steve!" Thor said with a broad smile, "We wondered why you dallied! We feared we would have to seek for you on yet another adventure!"

"Just some last words from your parents," Steve replied guardedly. Loki gave him a questioning look that he shrugged off. Odin's offer had filled him with a foreboding he wasn't ready to discuss yet.

"I've already called Pepper. She's got a team on her way."

"Anybody let Agent Fury know we're back?" Steve asked.

"I'm sure all of SHIELD is tracking on our return."

Mobilization with Pepper in charge took under fifteen minutes: before too long, they could see the Stark jet speeding across the sky.

If planes could be flown angrily, Pepper had mastered it. The aircraft came in low, the jets rotating downward as it switched to its vertical landing capabilities.

Pepper was sitting copilot, glaring at the Avengers through the pane of glass that separated them.

"Maybe we were better off in Hell," Clint ventured, catching sight of her stormy face.

"No fury like a woman or something, right?" Tony asked rhetorically.

"Like a woman _scorned_," Steve corrected automatically. "Shakespeare, Tony."

"Not my department. Anyway, pretty sure the bard didn't know her."

"No, I don't think he did," Clint agreed.

Pepper was running towards them almost as soon as the plane hit the ground, concern and anger battling for dominance on her face.

She stopped short, however, once she realized Steve was with them and beyond looking a little tired, wholly alive.

"Steve's alive?" Pepper asked in a whisper. "How? The news reports—"

"They're going to have a field day with this one," Tony agreed, pulling her into an embrace once she'd come close enough. "Steve, if I'm not careful, you'll usurp my place as media-fallout boy."

Pulling away, Pepper was on Steve next, her head buried in his chest. Tony waggled his eyebrows over her head and asked, "Should I be worried?"

Steve rolled his eyes.

"What happened?" She asked once she'd pulled away, wrapping her hand tightly around Tony's.

The team looked at one another.

"Steve was dead. I saw the reports. Somebody caught his death on camera phone. Nobody survives a skewering like that, not even a man like Steve," she continued when no one answered her.

"He didn't," Clint admitted reluctantly.

Pepper looked at Clint before she nodded slowly. "Let's get you back to the Tower. We can talk once you're all settled in."

"At the bar. We need alcohol to tell this tale," Tony broke in as they began walking back towards the plane.

"Lots of it."

0o0o0o0o0o0o

It wasn't that Loki was deliberately eavesdropping—it was that he'd heard voices coming down the hallway, and it was a sound that has grown progressively rare since their return.

Loki hung in the doorway, watching Natasha provide SHIELD with the necessary information from their journey, reporting that they were not yet battle-ready and would need some time to recover.

Fury acquiesced if only reluctantly, demanding a full report of their transpired adventure.

"I don't think you'll be getting it," Natasha said, hanging up. Thinking she was alone and unobserved, she was much less guarded, and her stress was palatable. She leaned heavily on the table, her head in her hands, fingers crimped into her hair.

He pushed off the frame, ghosting back down the hallway. Although they'd only been back a few days, there was a marked difference in the general atmosphere of the tower. There had been no attempts at group jamborees, and the den, which has been a frequent haunt for the Avengers to gravitate to remained empty.

Steve, Loki knew, was ensconced in his room with his sketchbooks. Romanov and Barton was similarly hidden away, and he could only assume Stark was in his garage. He was out of Niflheim, but It was as though he walked a building haunted by ghosts, and that unsettled him more than he was ready to admit.

He was not ready to acknowledge that he was partially, if not wholly responsible, for the dramatic shift in dynamics. Once, he couldn't have cared less what trials the Avengers endured; what consequences his actions wreaked on them. Unhappy with the burgeoning feelings of guilt and responsibility, he was gladdened to see his brother loitering in the hall. The god of thunder was studiously observing some painting of Stark as Iron Man, but from the look on his face, Loki knew he wasn't thinking about the garish expression of colors or the artist's interpretation of Stark's heroics.

"Brother," he said, his brother starting at Loki's voice—and that was odd—Thor was many things, but he wasn't jumpy—but his face brightened and broke into a smile. Behind his smile, he was tired, his complexion had a greenish pallor, and if Loki didn't know better, he would say his brother looked sick.

"Loki," Thor greeted him.

"I did not know you had become an art critic," he said, nodding at the oil painting.

"What? Oh—" Thor looked back at the piece. "I was only thinking of how similar this was to some of the tapestries that hang from our halls. I think I find Tony's subject material more encouraging."

"Really?" Loki glanced at the painting. He considered it ostentatious, and thematically very similar to many of the gilded tapestries that hung through Asgard. He said as much.

"It is true that there are many great feats of heroism displayed, but I find that I do not care for them as once I did."

The statement was so incongruous with everything Loki knew about his brother, that his sense of unease grew. One day, he would have to unearth everything that had happened to the Avengers, his brother included, which had altered them so.

"Would you care for supper, brother?" Loki asked, looking away from the painting.

"I grow tired of pizza," he admitted. They'd ordered out every night since they'd been back, pizza or Chinese, and Loki, too, had eaten his fill. He hadn't known he missed the communal home-cooked meals until he was left without.

"I will make it." Loki turned and headed towards the kitchen.

Intrigued, Thor followed him.

"You know how to cook?"

"In practice," Loki said, pulling a pot from under the stove. "I have watched Steve."

That seemed like a lifetime ago, and he'd never thought he'd have the opportunity to return to something as banal as cooking again.

"What are you making?" The god peeked over his brother's shoulder as Loki rifled through the pantry.

"Spaghetti," Loki said after a moment of searching for the word.

"It is a good dish," Thor grinned his approval. He watched Loki work in silence, fumbling through the cupboards until he found the requisite dishes and ingredients. He thought back to his conversation with Steve, about the division between women and men's labors; how perhaps the rules could be more fluid than he has been lead to believe.

"What can I do to help?"

Loki looked at him, surprise. His lips curled in anticipated snark, but he stopped himself, forcing his face to relax.

He thrust a box of noodles out at Thor.

"You make these."

"How do I do that?" Thor peered down at the box, eyes scanning the directions.

"Just bring the pot to a boil, and then put them in."

"I shall make quick work of it," Thor declared enthusiastically. Filling the pot with water, he tore the top off the box, and dumped them in all at once. He beamed at his brother.

Loki sighed audibly but without malice. He turned a knob and the stove glowed red briefly.

"You were supposed to put the noodles in _after_—ah, never mind. Now just wait here, until it boils."

Thor stared at the water for several minutes, as if force of will alone would make it bubble. Once he realized it was not an instant process, he set to watching Loki.

Loki cracked an egg into a bowl and dumped in breadcrumbs over a mass of ground meat, kneading the ingredients together. After adding a few spices, he began to roll the meat into balls.

"What are you doing?"

"I am making meatballs," Loki responded patiently, rolling another ball.

Thor hesitated. Then, "Can I help?"

Loki moved aside, allowing room for his brother. Every meatball they finished was added to an iron skillet, where it sizzled in waiting butter.

Natasha, silent as a cat, was upon them all at once. She set the table, only a word of acknowledgment spoken between them.

Pepper peeked her head into the kitchen when the aromas of cooking pasta and meatballs became irresistible. She opened a bottle of white wine and poured glasses for each chair.

"We need bread, don't we?" Natasha asked.

"And what about a vegetable?" Pepper added, rifling through the fridge. She pulled out bell peppers, cutting them up and adding them to the simmering tomato sauce Loki was making.

Without a word, he surrendered the sauce to Pepper, who mixed the tomato paste and vegetables together, delegating those present to various tasks.

Like atoms derelict of electrons, the rest of the team slowly ambled in. Steve was last, peering first over Loki's shoulder and then Pepper's. Satisfied, he sat down and Tony dealt him in the next hand.

"Spades, this time," Tony said. "Steve, you're my partner. How many books you got?"

"We are finished!" Thor crowed after dumping the pasta into a colander.

Thor portioned the pasta onto the plates, and Pepper, like clockwork, trailed behind him, topping each plate off with sauce while Natasha added slices of garlic bread. Loki came last in their lineup of portioning, dumping several meatballs onto each plate.

They ate dinner, familiar banter filling the silence that had filled Stark Tower since their return.

"What do you say about everyone living here?" Tony asked as the meal came to a finish. "Even you, Loki."

Clint and Natasha shared a look and were the first to respond.

"We already live here, Tony."

"So do I," Steve said. "You made me," he pointed out.

"Where else would I reside?" Thor asked, grabbing several slices of garlic bread.

"They are not bad accommodations," Loki allowed.

"It's okay with you?" Tony looked to Pepper, who smiled in response.

"You should've asked before you offered," she said, not unkindly. "Anyway, it's your tower."

"JARVIS!"

"Sir," JARVIS responded evenly.

"I need you to order some new letters to replace "Stark" on my tower. Get enough to spell 'Avengers' We'll put them up as soon as they're in."

"Understood, sir."

Tony smiled winningly at the group.

"Welcome to the Avengers Tower," he said.

They finished the meal in companionable silence, but after the dishes had been deposited in the sink and Steve set to cleaning them, the team dispersed as quickly and silently as they'd come.

Loki watched the man clean. They both knew that the dish washer was more than equipped to handle the load, but Steve had told him long ago that he found solace in something as mindless as cleaning dishes. When he was done, plates cleaned and dried, he turned around; mild surprise on his face when he saw Loki was still there.

The trickster god had seen little of his bonded since their return, but if the dark hallows that lined his eyes were any indication, he had not been sleeping well.

"Loki?" He asked. "Are you okay?"

"I am fine," he returned. "But I believe the same cannot be said for the rest of the team."

Sighing, Steve slid into the seat across from Loki. He was facing the window, and Loki could see the city's skyline reflected in his eyes. "No, it can't."

Loki had been so deliberate in every action he'd taken his whole life. He planned out all possible repercussions and subsequent reprisals. And in all that time, he had cared naught about the ramifications on those around him. Now that he had to live with the things he'd done through careless action, he felt unmoored and the feelings that swam in his heart were uncomfortable and unwanted.

"Loki," Steve said suddenly. "Have your parents ever done anything purely for the sake of ceremony?"

Loki frowned. "You may have noticed that Asgard is built on ceremony and parade."

"Yes, but have they ever done anything without purpose?"

While Asgard's multiple feasts, ceremonies, and general pomp and circumstance were grandiose, they were never superfluous. "Why do you ask?"

"The reason I was late returning to Earth after the Bitfrost opened is because Odin named me an honorary son. He said that were something to happen, I would be crowned King of Asgard."

The trickster god stared back at Steve. "What else did he say?"

"He said it was because I saved you and acted so heroically. Apparently it was Frigga's idea."

Loki leaned back in his chair, mulling over Steve's words. Loki knew his mother was prescient, and although she kept the future close to her chest, sharing only what she knew with her handmaiden, he was fairly confident she had a pattern of adjusting things in the present to affect the things she saw.

"Do you think it meant anything?"

Steve's intuition was correct—his parents were deliberate people. Odin was careful and methodical in his actions, Frigga even more so. If the Aesir knew what honor they'd bestowed on a lowly Midgardian—even one graced with immortality—there would be an outcry. His parents clearly knew this, but they'd bequeathed the title of honorary son all the same.

"No," Loki said. "It means nothing."

"Are you sure? Because it doesn't seem right to me."

"It is true that their actions are deliberate—but it simply to give you prestige so that your repeated visits will not be frowned upon by the court. Although you have been heroic in the past, you still only a human, and it would be unseemly for the All-father and his lady queen to be seen cavorting with a simple Midgardian."

Steve smiled and nodded at Loki's explanation, but his blue eyes were shrouded in disbelief, and Loki knew his companion did not believe him. Before he could say anything else, the captain stood. "Well, I'm off to bed. Have a goodnight, Loki."

Loki nodded in return, watching Steve disappear down the hall, the fib sitting ill in his throat. He did not know what was coming, knew that it couldn't be good, and that lying to his bonded would earn nothing for his efforts.

But if he were being completely honest, he was lying to himself, as well. He did not want anything unpleasant to befall his mother and perhaps if he could only believe his lie, nothing ill would come of it and Asgard would continue to exist as it always had. Perhaps his parents had truly acted without purpose, simply bestowing an honor upon the man that had saved their son.

But he knew that was a lie, too. The sun was setting in Asgard, and Loki knew as well as anybody that this was the first sign of Ragnarök.

End of Lonesome Traveler

Sorry the epilogue took a minute—my editor pointed out something incongruous and I had to do a longer rewrite than I was expecting, but I think it's stronger for it!

Thanks everybody for the support so far.

The next arc (working title, King and Lionheart) is currently being overhauled. I wrote all of this in the summer of 2012 and it largely languished until I found my dearheart editor, Val. She's helped my writing style improve immensely, helps me throw out what's superfluous, and reorganize the story so it's a better read. K&L is of equal or greater volume than either Lonesome or Wayfaring, so it'll take a little time. But I promise we'll get it up as soon as it's been finished and edited! It takes more time up front, but the result is that when it's ready, it can be posted in short order.


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